


Keith Moves In

by averagebear



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: ASPD Keith (Voltron), Appropriate erections, Bipolar Lance (Voltron), College, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Smut, Fist Fights, Forever, Gay Keith (Voltron), Inappropriate Erections, Insomniac Keith (Voltron), M/M, Masturbation, Recreational Drug Use, Roommates, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Study Buddies, allusions to vampirism but it isnt real, banned from the library, bi lance, it will happen though, keith and lance are a mess, keith is tired, lance (voltron) can jump like a dolphin, mentioned death of family, oh my god they were roommates, slowest burn im sorry, unresolved sexual tension CENTRAL HEAD QUARTERS, wet dreams
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-08-31 15:34:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 39,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8583919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/averagebear/pseuds/averagebear
Summary: (Keith moves in.)





	1. Keith Moves In

“What?! Hunk! You’re my main compadre, the egg to my sriracha, the perfect accomplice!”  Lance protested loudly and dramatically, “You can’t move out!”   
  
“Yeah, and you know what happens to accomplices, Lance? They get jailed. Or, I don’t know, maybe, Ds on their midterms because the night before _you_ made our whole apartment uninhabitable since you thought it’d be a cool and fun idea to try to make your own smoke bombs off of a pinterest recipe.” Hunk was playing the exasperated mom to a T right now, arms crossed and eyebrows raised, and it was making Lance cringe a bit.  
  
“Aw come on buddy! It _was_ cool! You said so yourself!”

“That was before my grades came back.” he said pointedly. Lance could already tell he wasn’t going to live this one down. “Look, Lance, I love you. I care about you as my dear friend. But I am not going to be your roommate anymore.”     
  
“Dude,”  he cried, getting desperate by now, “How the heckaroo am I supposed to pay rent?!” This argument, he felt, was infallible.  
  
“Well, I contacted student housing--”

“Student housing?!” he threw his hands in the air. 

“Yes, student housing, but it’s not as bad as you think --”

“I can’t live with a rando! I’m gonna die. I’m going to be friendless in an unknown battleground. This is going to be it for me--”

Hunk simply continued in a steady voice. “As it turns out, one Keith Kogane was the first available student seeking housing on campus.”  
  
Lance finally shut up, a contemplative pause. “Huh... _Keith_ -Keith?” All three of the boys went all the way back to high school, and while they weren’t extremely close, Keith was a part of the friend group and they hung out relatively frequently, especially if parties were involved. They were friends, and this was only complicated by the fact that Lance and Keith were official rivals, and there was an unspoken tension between them so thick you could cut it with a knife.

“Yeah. _Keith_ -Keith. Don’t be mad, but I already got everything organized, and he’s supposed to be moving in in two weeks.”  
  
Lance knew he should have felt betrayed, abandoned, left in the dust, and all other related sentiments so familiar to him. For some reason, though, Lance found himself almost… giddy by this prospect.

_____________________________

 

Keith cut the engine and parked his bike in the lot outside Lance’s apartment complex. He had just returned the rental he’d needed to move his mattress and furniture. Keith didn’t really own much, but what he did he couldn’t fit onto the back of the motorcycle.

But, having finished with the heavy lifting, he now carried just a duffle bag with his clothes and few personal belongings. He climbed the stairs to the building with the bag over his shoulder, checking his phone to see the text he’d gotten earlier from Lance.

 _Luk under the mat mullet_  

Accompanied by an eye emoji. Keith resisted the urge to text back a remark. He didn’t have a mullet. Lance had to know this. Keith decided a long time ago that Lance simply thought he looked like an ass and calling someone mullet was a good enough way to get that across. Besides, Keith knew he did kind of look like an ass. He really didn’t try to cultivate the whole dark and dangerous thing that people saw in him but he couldn’t help that everyone did.

He unlocked the apartment and headed to his room to unpack the rest of his belongings. Lance was in class for the afternoon so the silence was unsurprising. It took Keith twenty four minutes to unpack his bag, he timed it. Relieved to finally be free of the stress of moving in, he headed to the living room to try and relax before he had to start on his homework, which would inevitably take up the majority of the night.

Keith had been over to Lance’s before, so he was used to the atmosphere and layout. He saw some of Lance’s more recent art projects, some in progress and some finished, in the dining and living room. Keith didn’t mind the semi-mess, Lance needed somewhere to do his work and it was his apartment.

Keith also found Lance’s art quite good, though he’d probably never say that out loud. It disturbed some of the guests in Lance’s apartment who were less familiar with him, but Keith just found this kind of funny. Lance’s one sculpture of a humanoid version of himself reaching out while insulation foam poured out from the head certainly garnered a few uneasy looks. But Keith recognized the honesty in it and could see that he was very talented.

Better to keep that to himself. Lance would either let it get to his head or think that Keith was a weirdo.

 Keith tore his eyes from Lance’s current piece, an aquarium with 1,000 ladybugs and a quite sad looking figure suspended inside, and decided to get an early start on his homework.

_____________________________

 

Lance took the liberty of writing out a list of ground rules for the apartment in his spare time and the day after Keith had moved in, he laid it out on the kitchen table. “Ok, so, here’s how this whole thing’s gonna go,”  he proclaimed.  Keith rolled his eyes. 

“Lance and Keith apartment rules: Number one, I take a lot of really long baths to chillax, so don’t get on my case if I’m in there a few hours.” Keith raised an eyebrow. Lance continued.

“Two, I'm gonna be playing loud music at like midnight or 2 or 3 or whatever in the morning but it’s just me jamming out, don’t worry.”   

“Why would I worry?” Keith interjected.

 Lance continued, ignoring him, and Keith huffed, “Three, I keep the thermostat set no higher than 75 and no lower than 70 degrees. If you want to open that up for debate I,” He turned his head toward Keith with narrowed eyes, “Might, consider hearing your opinion.” Lance looked at Keith expectantly. 

“Uh,” Keith gave a small shrug and shook his head, “No. Sounds fine.” 

“Oh,” Lance paused, then continued with vigor, “Well then, the last one is I don’t mind if you eat my food but you _have_ to tell me what you ate otherwise I’ll think it’s still there waiting for me, and then when I go to eat it and it’s gone I'm gonna have to grieve for a while and that'll suck,” Lance shook his head gravely. 

“Don’t worry, I won’t eat your food.”

Lance’s grave look fell immediately. “I just said you could! Is something wrong with my cooking?” 

“I’ve never had your cooking.” Keith said, indignantly.

“Well, it's good. Whatever, those are all of my rules!” Lance was being instigative but by this point it was so natural between the two of them that there was no real aggression in it at all. 

“Those aren't really rules, Lance. You just told me some of your weird habits,” Keith said with a smirk, simply responding in turn.

“Ok, long baths are _not_ a,” Lance used air quotes, “weird habit.” Lance stood up and stuck the list onto the fridge with a magnet. “Besides, last night I heard you go in and out of the house like three times, so you’re probably a vampire or something. Who’s weird now?”

“I’m not a- 

“Tell it to the judge, mullet.”

 Keith scoffed and started walking towards his bedroom.

“Oh right!” Lance called out to him, “You’d better recycle! Respect the earth!”

 Keith shut his bedroom door.

_____________________________

 

Keith was twenty eight pages into some of the driest assigned reading he’d experienced in his college career when he heard a knock on his bedroom door. More specifically, a series of knocks. Kind of an unrecognizable pattern, but Lance liked to experiment with his entrances.

 “Door’s open,” Keith called out. He shifted his tired eyes from the text to Lance swinging open his door.

 “Helllloooooo Keith are you ready to par- Hey? You’re doing homework?” Lance made a face. “Come on!

He cupped his hands around his mouth. “It’s! Time! To! Party!”

Lance really was an expert at improvised casual but involved dance moves. Keith watched him punch the air and slide side to side as he voiced his enthusiasm. Lance stilled and suddenly his eyes zeroed in on Keith’s feet, pointing. “And take your shoes off. This is your house! Your room! You have to start taking your shoes off it’s just unnecessary discomf-”

“Yeah I got it.” Keith stood up from his desk and bent to take off his boots. “ But actually, yeah. I’m done with homework.” He set his shoes down neatly by the closet. “I could use a bowl.”

He turned to Lance, who looked happy enough but was still standing in the doorway.

“You can come in. I won’t bite.” Keith half smiled at Lance over his shoulder as he walked over to his bed and sat down at the edge.

“Cool your jets, Keefer the weed demon,” Lance surveyed Keith’s room as he stepped inside to join him. This was the first time he’d been in Keith’s room since he moved in. “I didn’t want to be rude.”

“I’m not a weed demon.” Keith said, only slightly indignant.

“I smell you toking in here in the wee hours weed man. You’re a weed machine.”

Keith snickered. “Hardly.”

Lance trailed his eyes over the room unabashed, his hands on his hips. Keith was observing him observe, packing weed from the grinder into the bowl. Finally Lance fixed his eyes on Keith again.

“How are you so thoroughly unpacked? Where’s all your stuff?”

“Here.” Keith said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. He saw Lance’s unrelenting stare and added, “I don’t have a lot of stuff.” He stood up from the bed and passed the bowl to Lance, who took a hit and stifled a cough. Keith politely didn’t laugh. He did smirk though.

 “Zoo wee man oh man, I need some water.” Lance led the two of them out of Keith’s bedroom and towards the living room after passing the bowl back. “How aren’t you coughing all the time?”  

 “I’m a weed demon.” Keith had this way of getting across a good deal of humor with absolutely no affectation to his voice. He exhaled another cloud, blowing a few smoke rings and watching Lance eye them, while settling onto the couch. He thought of a few reasons why Lance would watch him blow smoke rings with such rapt attention but decided to not let the more interesting ones get to his head.

 As Lance sat down beside him he tried to relax into the night as best as he could.

 He side-eyed Lance with a wry smile after exhaling a ring that floated off towards his new roommate. “You aren’t going to get too high are you?” Keith had his fair share of experience with too-high Lance. The guy could practically get there off of second hand smoke.

 “Who, me?” Lance asked with shifty eyes and an unashamed smile that Keith knew was self-aware. “You must be talking about someone else.”

 Keith passed him the bowl, knowing he should likely have cut him off by now, but not able to bring himself to rain on Lance’s fun parade.

 “Right.” Keith said now with a full grin. “I’ll do my best to handle you.”

______________________________

 

Lance was baked.

While he wasn’t even remotely new to smoking, he very rarely bought his own weed, spare for when he’d toss in courtesy cash if he was being smoked out too frequently by a friend (sometimes it just happened like that during one of those “we’re unanimously agreeing to party every night to fend off debilitating hopelessness” time periods that his friend group shared).  Notoriously, he always managed to get a little too high, and then he became even more simultaneously-confused-and-brazen than usual.

At the moment he was leaning more on the brazen side as he and Keith sat next to one another on the couch. _Their_ couch, now that the other boy had moved in.

Of course, this meant Keith had become his attendant for the half hour or so that he was so high he couldn't fulfill basic functions anymore. Keith had quickly resigned to this fate and performed it as efficiently as humanly possible. Fetching him water, helping him remember the train of thought he’d been on only 4 seconds prior, even retrieving him a blanket because Lance had said, “my toesies are froze-ies” and pouted until Keith sighed and got one for him -- Keith completed all of these tasks diligently, as if they were the homework assignments he droned over in the late hours of the night.

The guy really never stopped trying to be perfect, Lance thought. Well, more truthfully, he didn’t think “trying.” Everyone knew Keith was perfect -- perfect grades, perfect sportage, perfect hair -- this was a given, and despite his constant griping, even Lance could admit it. Within the safety of his internal monologue.

Overall Keith had been surprisingly helpful considering their cool-but-not-that-close dynamic. Lance would feel weird about it if it didn’t feel so nice to be doted on, probably. He wiggled in his blanket.

“What do you need?” Keith asked with pursed lips, tone not unfriendly but still wound tight.

“To pee,” he whined, flopping back into the couch and curling into his blanket.  

“Well, can’t help you with that.”

It was a statement of fact, and Lance begged to differ. In general, he was inclined to defy just about all facts, especially when they felt inconvenient to Lance.

“Why not?” he challenged, “I thought we were bros. Nothing wrong with bros helping other bros tinkle.”  

Though he wasn’t serious about wanting Keith to help him take a whizz, Lance felt a shift of energy, very subtle but still present. Lance quirked an eyebrow and watched Keith stiffen silently in faux-nonchalance. It was only a moment, a few seconds, and then Lance hopped up from the couch and began his journey to the toilet.    
  
“Was Keith embarrassed just then?” he smugly mused in the solitude of the bathroom. That counted as a victory, for sure.

“Heh, got ‘im!” He improvised a casual but involved dance as he washed his hands.

_________________________________

 

After Lance came down from high town (it didn’t take him that long actually), and he badgered Keith into playing a videogame that Keith had to admit he ended up enjoying quite a bit, Lance fell asleep on the couch and Keith retired to his room.

He said goodnight to Lance before he left even though Lance was sleeping too hard to hear it.

It was only about 12:30 when Lance fell asleep, an early night for both of them, so Keith knew he wouldn’t be falling asleep anytime soon.

He honestly wanted to wake Lance up before he left. It was a foreign impulse, but he recognized that he really wanted to. Lance would probably be up for staying up later if Keith just asked him. Lance had this thing about maximizing the amount of time he spent having fun and making sure the fun to work ratio was never lower than his standards.

Plus he was a really nice guy, Keith knew with certainty, and if Keith simply told him he hated going to bed some nights (all nights) Lance would probably stay up and keep him company.

But Keith couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Plus he didn’t want to wake someone who was sleeping so deeply.

But mostly I’m an isolative asshole, he thought, doing sit ups on the hardwood floor of his new bedroom. He switched to push ups after his muscles burned in protest, and then he kept going some more.

He thought of Lance’s funny little comment earlier about “bros being bros”. He thought about it long and hard. Mostly he tried to think of whether or not Lance was just messing with him. Keith knew that Lance liked getting under his skin and Keith would readily admit that he liked that Lance was resilient enough to try. But Keith was mostly sure that Lance never meant to flirtatiously suggest the idea of intimacy between them.

Even though he saw, intuitively perceived rather, the semi-satisfied glint in Lance’s eyes when his comment made Keith tense up.

Keith wanted to see how Lance would respond if he flirtatiously suggested the idea of intimacy back at him. Sometimes he really wanted to, especially when he saw that Lance was seemingly being obliviously cheeky.

He kept his comments to himself though. If he flirtatiously said or did anything Lance would probably just be uncomfortable. Keith didn’t want to cause that.

They were good friends, even though Lance had announced them as rivals back in high school for reasons Keith still had unclear answers to. And now they were good friends and roommates. But Keith was mostly certain that Lance didn’t have any significant desire for any kind of intimacy with him. Mostly.

No, he was certain.

He checked the time. Barely an hour had passed.

Before his room got too loud, Keith slipped out of the house and began to run. Morning would come sooner than he wanted anyways.

_________________________________________  
  


...Lance vigorously pretended he hadn’t actually had that wet dream about Keith. He filled his mind of pretty much anything else -- which cereal he would eat, the multitude art projects he had to get done by tomorrow morning, the ratio of female to male calico cats being 3000 to 1 (someone’s mom told him about this a couple years back and he still thought about it sometimes) -- none of it was really helping. He removed his sleeping mask, silenced his music, and sighed.

Sad to say, this hadn’t even been the first dream of sexy nature he’d had of his small, dark, and handsome roommate. Oh no, those had started as early as freshmen year of highschool, back when Keith didn’t even know he existed. The aforementioned dreams had thoroughly informed Lance of his own fluid sexuality, not that he’d ever mentioned this to anyone before.

Still, the pretty boy hadn’t made a debut like this in a long time. Once his hormones had settled and the relationship between he and Keith had simmered down to the “we’re friends but we’re jerkoffs to one another and bicker all the time” dynamic they had now, the dreams mostly ceased. But now. This.

Even more frustrating was that the dream hadn’t even been a good one; there was some weird dystopic carnival theme going on in the background and Keith’s face kept morphing slightly to be more and less Keithly. The dream didn’t even end with orgasm. Though foggy, Lance could swear the climax was both of them melting into the carousel. He’d still woken up with a hard-on.

“Great.”

He felt inconvenienced, like his dream was a direct attack executed by Keith. He wanted to argue about it to the other boy but it’d mean actually telling him about the dream, so he couldn’t, and this frustrated him even more. He groaned and slung his body out of bed, dragging his feet along tile to get to the bathroom.  
  
“Guess it’s time to take care of business,” he grumbled, wrapping a fluffy white towel around his waist, strategically holding his change of clothes over the bulge. He opened his bedroom door and looked forward to exfoliating and moisturizing. That always made him feel better.

Keith was making coffee around 8 in the morning. He had forgone any attempts to try to sleep, and after his run he’d taken a shower and then laid on his bed, staring at the ceiling with headphones in to block out all the white noise.

Around 7:30 he decided to start getting ready for the day and stop feeling sorry for himself. He’d functioned on less sleep before.

Anyways lack of sleep was a sorry excuse.

Keith poured himself a cup after the coffee maker quieted and then began heading back to his bedroom to pass the time before leaving for class. He was just outside the kitchen when he heard Lance’s bedroom door open and close. It was normal for Lance to be up relatively early so he thought little of it.

Then he turned the corner and saw Lance heading to the bathroom.

Keith usually kept his explicit thoughts about Lance to a minimum, both to keep himself from thinking too much about the impossible, and out of respect for Lance. Lance didn’t think of him like that and he’d probably freak out if he knew that Keith even entertained the idea.

But now, seeing him exit his bedroom in just a bath towel, and seeing the idea of intimacy being flirtatiously (unintentionally but Lance had to _know_ on some level) displayed in front of him, Keith kind of found himself unable to think of what he was supposed to do.

He reflexively stilled and quieted. He stopped in the archway before the hall and leaned against the frame, taking a drink from his mug to give himself something to do. Lance would notice him within seconds so he might as well wait for it to happen.

Lance yawned as he exited his room, blinking the bleariness from his eyes until he registered that a shadowy figure was in his line of sight. He startled, letting out a fairly high pitched screech and clamoring for stability before he understood the figure to be Keith. Brows furrowing, he huffed out his tension and glared at the other. It hadn’t dawned on him that he wasn’t alone in the house at this time anymore. Hunk always slept in very late. Right. Keith.  
  
“Well,” he said immediately, as if the single word was a self-contained statement. He pursed his lips.

Lance wasn’t shy about his body. He felt generally comfortable with the way he looked and believed that nudity shouldn’t be needlessly sexualized.  So he couldn’t understand why he was so grossly dissatisfied with the nonchalance Keith, his official platonic rival and roommate,  had embodied in this situation.

It wasn’t that he wanted Keith to be ogling at him or anything, but, well, why wouldn't he? The guy was gay, right? That was what Lance assumed, though it had never been confirmed. And Lance looked good, right?  Just the thought of not being Keith’s type was enough to get him fuming -- simply because of his own narcissism. He scoffed internally. Why should he care what Keith of all people thought of him. It was just Keith. He was just shaken by the dream, that was all. The perfectly natural dream -- the kind of dream any guy could have about anyone.

Right. The dream. Shit. His boner. Shit. Fuck. Shit.  Lance was equally as stubborn as he was dissatisfied, so stubborn that he refused to react in anyway less nonchalant than Keith, even with a raging hard-on. He cleared his throat and trained his face to relax.

“Sleeping beauty’s sure up early” he drawled aggressively before realizing he’d accidentally called Keith a beauty. “That’s me. I’m sleeping beauty.” he delivered it like a punchline and thought he probably pulled it off.  
  
He wanted to give a snappier one-liner, several for that matter, but he had, uh, more pressing things to attend to. Pressing uncomfortably in that exact moment. He shuffled forward, heading off to the bathroom without further comment, but Lance had accepted Keith’s stoicism in the face of his nudity as a challenge, and one he intended to win.   

Keith took every ounce of control he had and funneled it into not thinking at all about the fact that Lance called him, indirectly, a beauty. It didn’t mean a thing aside from being understandably miffed about a breach in privacy. Lance usually liked to make fun of the way he looked. And he retracted his comment so as not to unintentionally breach the gay sphere that kept Keith at a safe distance.  

Still, he was just standing here. He purposefully schooled his expression into unaffected so as not to make Lance uncomfortable. And yet the guy seemed personally offended.

Keith swallowed everything telling him to respond in turn and simply narrowed his eyes.

“Good morning to you too,” He drank from his mug and then added, for good measure, “Sleeping beauty.”


	2. Work Ethic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Keith shows up to Lance's job and becomes his tutor.

The whole rest of that morning was consumed by Lance furiously muttering to himself about the interaction the two shared. “ _Sleeping beauty,”_ he seethed, “God, who does he think he is anyway?”  Lance simply could not accept that Keith had no reaction to his partial nudity, and his constant need for attention and validation could not survive it. It was never easy to swallow non-responses because they made him feel insignificant and thusly insecure, and to avoid that, he tried with all his might to pry out _something_ from the hot-head when he was making a front of acting cool.  It hadn’t worked this morning.  


Despite his agitation, he’d gone through the motions of getting to class and then to one of his odd jobs from craigslist. Today’s was a ghost tour around downtown, so he and a gaggle of tourists stood in front of their city’s historic movie theatre now. He wore one of those hoaky Halloween cloaks and gave an equally as hoaky rendition of the ghost story. 

“While the novel antiquity of the downtown theatre may not be rivaled, local lore reveals a grim history to its beautiful facade. A good number of spooks plague this 86-year-old facility, including a former projectionist and a woman searching for her,” he gave dramatic pause “long-lost fiance…” he spoke with a voice full of bravado but his internal monologue couldn’t have been more bored. He’d told this story at least 400 times by now and he was getting paid under minimum wage because of some weird capitalist loophole that US Americans loved to exploit. He wanted to go home.  
  
“In 1965, projectionist Foster “Fink” Finley reportedly collapsed--” he suddenly caught sight of Keith striding through the bustle -- he’d recognize that mullet anywhere. His eyes widened.

Keith looked to be on the way home from work, dressed in his all black uniform. Probably headed to wherever he parked his bike downtown. He looked closed off from the rest of the world, as usual.

Then all at once he seemed to become acutely aware of Lance’s presence and turned his head, staring him straight down. He stopped about halfway through the crowd, and without even having the decency to look surprised, looked at Lance with a raised eyebrow.

Arms crossed over his chest, Keith was amused to say the least. His expression was carefully controlled, just barely the hint of a smile. He tilted his head ever so slightly to convey, _Go on?_  
  
“Uh-and uh- yeah, he collapsed at the theatre on one of his shifts and later died of a heart attack…” he continued, feeling a good bit more nervous about the dorky story now that Keith was watching. He cleared his throat and avoided Keith’s gaze.  
  
“Fink had dedicated 30 years of his life to running the projectors, and now, whamo blamo, he haunts the building. You know the rest. Lots of pics with silhouettes shadows and orbs through those doors, right that way, yeah, exactly, through there. We’ll meet back up after you’re all done.” he guided them all inside, corralling them like confused sheep.  
  
He then stormed over the Keith, whisper-yelling “What are you, a stalker?!”

Keith bristled. Lance always dialed it up way too high. “No.” He kept himself from glaring. “I just got off work,” Keith nodded to the apron slung over his shoulder. His glare softened and a completely well-intentioned glint returned to his eyes. “And I thought I’d stay for the show.”  
  
“Well, then you’re gonna have to pay up in cash right now because this boy doesn’t work for free,” Lance sassed, sticking his hand out as if he actually expected money.  
  
Keith’s eyes shifted from Lance’s hand back to his eyes. “I don’t think you did a good enough performance.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned back from the gravitational pull that seemed to always appear between them. “And you can’t charge me for looking at you.”      
  
Lance made a series of incomprehensible noises of offense. “It’s not my fault I got distracted by a walking, breathing Hot Topic advertisement. And, furthermore,” he stuck his finger in the air “I actually charge by the minute for star gazing privileges.” If sparkles could magically materialize around people in real life, this would have been the moment.  
  
Keith, so immediately overcome with irritation, said through gritted teeth, “This is my _work_ uniform, and it's not from hot topic.” He wasn’t feeling up for Lance’s provokes after the shift he’d just had. But the guy really got to him, always.  
  
“And if you insist,” Keith smirked to contain his anger, stepping into Lance’s bubble again, “Here, it’s been five minutes since I saw you.” Keith shoved a bill into the pocket on Lance’s ridiculous cloak without preamble, staring him down.  
  
“Thank you!” Lance yelled aggressively, mimicking Keith’s body posture and getting even further into his face until they were practically touching noses.  
  
“Yeah?” Keith prompted, fists clenched. He really could see this escalate if he let his impulsive anger add fuel to the fire. So he squeezed his eyes shut and schooled himself. “Tch. I don’t have the energy for this.”  
  
“I don’t have energy for your face!” Lance fumed.  
  
Keith’s expression twisted again, but only for a millisecond. He took a deep breath and a step back. Then he nodded in the direction behind Lance. “Look’s like you’re needed.”  
  
Lance turned and saw that the tourists were congregated awkwardly outside now, balking at the two of them. “Is that like his boyfriend or something?” he heard one of them say quietly with concern to her friend. There was a silence.  
  
Lance huffed. He didn’t want to get fired.  
  
“I’ll see you at home, pendejo.” he yielded, shoving one of his hands in his pockets and retrieving the crisp money Keith had given him. “And, here, I can’t actually take this.”  
  
Keith had already shrugged him off, however, throwing Lance an infuriating side-eyed glance over his shoulder and exiting the vicinity as quickly as he’d entered.  
  
“You should keep it.” He called back to him, “If your work ethic goes to show anything.” He held up his hand in a pseudo wave as he walked off. “Later.”  


 _________________________________

 

Lance groaned as he tried to afford Integrated Arithmetic and Algebra any attention in his room. It was one of his prerequisite courses that he couldn’t get out of despite being an art major, and while the work itself didn’t necessarily challenge him, the ability to motivate himself to actually do the work was almost unbearably difficult. He groaned again, slamming his head against the wall over and over.  
  
The sound of the front door unlocking filtered through the apartment. Keith quietly closed the door behind him and collapsed in one of the dining room chairs. He didn’t have school or work this morning, so he’d gone to the gym as per usual to intentionally tire his body out beyond reason. Running on little sleep typically wasn’t an issue for him, but he could feel it weighing down on him after the weight training he’d just put himself through.  
  
And he might have run to the gym and back, forgoing the bike. Campus wasn’t that far from their apartment. It was economical. He blinked back exhaustion as he poured himself a glass of water. Leaning back against the kitchen counter, he listened for Lance’s presence and heard...what he was sure was banging on a wall.  
  
Well, Lance was home.  
  
And he was losing it. Lance flung his bedroom door open, intending on drinking something in the fridge hoping it would magically cure his dysfunctionality. He slunk out, slouched, dragging his feet, eyes closed somberly, looking like despair had ravaged his body and left him weak. With each step he took he sighed though he wasn’t conscious of it. He didn’t even notice Keith was there as he passed.  
  
Keith continued leaning, silent, against the kitchen counter. It wasn’t until Lance had reached the fridge that he decided to speak up. “Evening.”    
  
“AH!” Lance jumped, flinching away from where Keith’s voice came from and getting into a karate pose. “What?! How long have you been there?!” he looked Keith up and down, noticing his shirt clinging to his abdomen, hair still damp. “And why are you… moist?”  
  
Keith blinked. “Not long. So don’t try the whole stalker thing again.” He downed his glass of water to try and stable himself, simultaneously lightheaded and on edge. A single drop of water dripped from his mouth down his chin. Keith wiped it away. “I was at the gym.”  
  
Lance swallowed, now decidedly resisting the urge to a̶p̶p̶r̶e̶c̶i̶a̶t̶e̶  notice many details about Keith’s physical appearance. Keith looked ill and Lance wasn’t sure what to do, so he settled for an, “Uh, are you ok?”  
  
Keith stared at Lance for about two seconds, his brow furrowed. He used the hem of his shirt to wipe away the sweat at his forehead. “I was up late. I’m fine.” He pushed off from the counter. “What about you? Homework not working out for you?”  
  
Lance had a feeling Keith’s deal was a whole lot more than a simple “I was up late” but he kept that to himself for now. “How did you know I was doing homework?” he inquired skeptically, giving him squinted eyes.  
  
“I guessed.” Keith paused. “From the way you dragged yourself out here with your eyes closed.”  
  
“Man, I don’t wanna talk about it.” he admitted, too defeated by his academic troubles to be much of a hassle right now. “But yes it’s homework.”  
  
“What homework? I could probably help you.” Keith meant it. “I actually don’t have anything I need to do tonight.” He added, “Besides take a shower.”  
  
Lance decidedly resisted the urge to think about Keith taking a shower. He didn’t know why he’d been so constantly hot and bothered these days but it was getting inconvenient. He shook the thoughts away, rubbing a hand down his face.  
  
“I don’t know man. What do you know about math?” he knew the question was irritatingly broad.  
  
“Past pre-calc I can’t help you. But you’re probably in algebra for your math requirement, right?” Keith shrugged. “Let me take a look.”     
  
Lance shifted his eyes around the room, suddenly feeling a bit shy, or coquettish, or something, but also really really wanting the help.  The shy part gave in. “Well, ok.” He shrugged and gestured for Keith to follow him into his room. Once they were in, he made a motion for Keith to sit on his bed where his school supplies were sprawled haphazardly.  
  
Keith faltered, “As you pointed out I’m really sweaty. I don’t want to get your sheets dirty.”  
  
“Dude who cares, I wash these badboys twice a week. It’s not like you stink.”  
  
Keith fixed Lance with another look, like he was trying to figure out something layers into what Lance had said. “Alright.” He sat down and could tell that Lance put a lot of thought into the type of comforter he used. He grabbed Lance’s work wordlessly and began looking through the problems.  
  
“Lance. You have all of the math written out already.” Keith was a little surprised at Lance’s notetaking. “You just haven’t done any of the work yet.”    
  
Lance groaned louder and longer than all the times yet, flopping back onto his queen size mattress beside Keith. “That’s the problem,” he whined.  
  
Keith eyed Lance’s notebook, and then Lance pouting beside him, and then the notebook again. He couldn’t help it, he started laughing, as he picked up a loose pen on Lance’s bed and began scribbling away. As he wrote he laughed even harder. “Here,” He handed Lance his notebook, grinning, “You’re hilarious. I finished it for you.”  
  
The sound of Keith’s laughter made Lance feel light; he couldn’t remember having really heard it before, or at least not having stopped to appreciate it. It felt sort of addictive, and Lance was so hung up by the significance of the symbol of comfort that he was totally caught off guard by the gesture of kindness. Lance embodied the phrase “starry eyed” in that moment, looking at Keith like he were something incredible, something like magic and kitten paws. “Holy shit!” he scrambled up and looked at the paper for evidence. “Holy shit!! You’re the best man, I-I-” overwhelmed and full of gratitude, he flung his arms around the other and hugged him tight.  
  
Keith was caught off guard but relaxed and patted Lance on the back, probably a bit too hard. He honestly couldn’t remember the last time someone hugged him. Years. Maybe never?  
  
Lance smelled very clean. And a bit sweet.  
  
“Don’t report me for academic dishonesty.”  
  
“Do I look like a snitch?” he replied in mock offense as he pulled away from Keith. It was a more comfortable hug than he’d have expected. Keith’s body was very warm and firm.  
  
Keith stared at Lance for a while, as if actually determining whether or not he looked like a snitch. “No, I guess you don’t.” Keith stood up and stretched. “Hey,” He looked down at Lance, “I can help you again if you’d like. Maybe next time you can actually do some of the work.” His eyes were glazed over from exhaustion but he was smirking regardless.  
  
“You have yourself a -” he began without thinking. Alarms promptly began ringing in his head, “study sesh.”

 

_________________________________

 

Keith kept his word. A few days later had the two of them working together at the campus library. Lance asked for guidance in the algebra department when needed, but the meeting was soon less of tutoring on Keith’s part and more of simply working on their respective assignments in comfortable silence. Though Lance did contribute elaborate sighs and expletives when frustrated with his work.  
  
The library was roomy and sparsely crowded up on the third level where they worked, and they sat side by side at a table. Lance became more interested in the view out the window than his text book. His leg bounced near-violently. He dragged his gaze back to the problem. The numbers and letters blurred out of focus, incomprehensible. He was getting mad.  
  
“Keith.”  
  
Keith continued typing furiously for a minute. “Yeah?” His voice was gravelly with underuse and no sleep. He finally turned to Lance, taking off his reading glasses and rubbing at the dark circles under his eyes. “What is it?”  
  
Lance simply stared at Keith in silence, as if Lance could unburden his growing frustration with his homework simply by funneling it into Keith’s stormy eyes. The feeling only having been diminished a tad, he said, “This problem. Is pissing me off.”  
  
“You wanna talk about it?” Keith asked, with what might have been a degree of sarcasm.  
  
“Are you my tutor or what?” Lance asked incredulously.    
  
“Your tutor? I didn’t know it was official.” Didn’t even try to hide his smirk.  
  
Lance sighed through his nose. “Keith, please.”  
  
There was some kind of glint in Keith’s eyes. “Alright, let me see.” He held out his hand for Lance’s notebook.  
  
Lance handed it over and rubbed at his eyes. “It’s problem number 2, I just don’t even know what they’re asking from me.”  
  
Keith took one look at it and wrote out about half of the math for the problem. Then he handed it back, “Do you want me to walk you through it?” He asked with his head propped in his hand. Somehow smiling with an essentially blank face. “Even though I know you know how to do it. You’re just bored.”  
  
“Pshhhh,” he said, clearly having been caught but giving an “as if” sort of response. “And what makes you even say that?”  
  
“Well there’s that,” Keith pointed to Lance’s restless leg, eyes still sharply on Lance’s, “And there’s the fact that you’ve been staring out the window. You’re kind of distracting me.”    
  
Lance gave a sound of offense, not actually prepared to be called out. “Well sorry, princess, not everyone’s a perfect machine like you.”  
  
Keith’s mouth dropped. “ _Princess_?”  
  
“Yeah, _princess_.” Lance declared.  
  
Keith stared, taken aback, then his expression turned a bit dangerous. “You think I’m perfect?”  
  
“Wha-? I-” Lance started, actually beginning to sputter like an overheating car. “I mean. That’s your whole thing!” he tried to defend his statement. He could already feel the tables were beginning to turn.  
  
Keith openly smiled. “My _whole_ thing, huh?”  
  
“Yeah, Perfect-Keith. You have to get that a lot.”  he felt like he was on trial, getting more defensively-nervous by the second.  
  
Keith looked genuinely confused for a second. Then he raised a brow. “I guess. But, not from you.”  
  
“Believe it or not, I too am mere mortal.” Lance delivered with faux-grandiosity.    
  
“Oh, and I’m not?” Keith leaned forward, arms crossed over his knees.  
  
Lance paused briefly as he thought of a come-back. “No, we’ve already established that _you’re_ a vampire, remember?”  
  
Keith made a noncommittal sound and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. “No, I don’t remember establishing that.” A beat. “But if I am, shouldn’t you try not to provoke me?” Keith could admit he was having fun. He tried to keep the fiery intensity out of his eyes that he knew usually unnerved people, but he was having a lot of fun. Backing Lance into several corners, that is.  
  
“Pfff, I'm not afraid of vampires.” Lance said. “They're just emos with fangs.” his dismissive attitude was only a byproduct of feeling out on the spot. At the very least, this _was_ a lot more fun than his algebra.  
  
“I’m not emo.” Keith managed to get out without much bite in his voice. He ignored the fang part. His canines really were pointier than average.  
  
“What are you gonna do, bite me?” Lance antagonized flippantly.  
  
A million, microscopic expressions flitted across Keith’s face. Gone faster than they had appeared. Then he said, mildly, “Only if you ask nicely.”  
  
Eyes widening, Lance could feel a deep blush spread like wildfire across his face, so deep he could feel the heat radiating off his cheeks. “Wha-” he began.  
  
“So it looks like you’re scared after all.” Keith was all composure and barely there smirks. But he was trying very hard to keep it contained. Whatever “it” might be.  
  
“I’m not scared!!” Lance blurted, too much gusto revealing just how flustered he’d become.  
  
“Do you want me to drink your blood while I’m at it?”    
  
Crimson. Lance could tell Keith was really basking in his state of discomposure, and that pissed Lance off. Keith’s eyes were twinkling more than usual, and as Lance glared deep into them he noticed how wide his pupils were. The glare turned into a flash of serious contemplation, then,  
  
“...Dude, are you really a vampire?” his tone conveyed a certain degree of gravity. “If you are, you can totally tell me, I’ll be cool with it.”  
  
Keith felt something peculiar and yet entirely expected settle within him. Not settle, emerge? Something sparked. He couldn’t believe how high he felt off of Lance’s reactions and now, how endeared he was by Lance’s genuine doubt of his humanity. He said he’d be “cool with it”, for christ’s sake. Keith couldn’t help himself.  
  
He let all of the restrained energy overflow into his eyes, pierced Lance with it, and very deliberately leaned in close to say, “Yes.”  
  
Lance could feel Keith’s breath on the side of his neck and a shiver trembled down his spine. He turned his head to look Keith in his eyes, their faces so close he could feel Keith’s body heat as well as he could his own blush. For a few moments, he stayed like that, misty eyed, enchanted, either by the superstition he was always so gullible about or their proximity to one another. As suspicion crept its way through him, and then the magic dissipated. Lance squinted his eyes again.  
  
“Are you fucking with me?” he asked with mistrust heavy in his voice.  
  
Keith eyed him steadily. “About which part?”  
  
Lance didn’t know there was more than one part, but followed suit. “So you are.”  
  
Keith’s composure splintered. “I can’t beli-” He broke off and settled on staring at Lance, indignant. Then he felt like laughing, but he didn’t. “I’m not a vampire. Sorry to disappoint."  
  
“Unbelievable. Unbe-fuckin-lievable.” Lance was shaking his head. “For just one second I got to thinking we were having a moment, but then this.”  He leaned back in his chair.  
  
“I’d say we still had a moment.” Keith’s eyes were cryptic. “I can’t help your overactive imagination.”    
  
Lance tossed Keith a quick furtive glance, something akin to vulnerability in it, and then dispelled it all away with a wave of his hand.  
  
“So are you gonna help me with this problem or not, tutor?”  
  
Keith had a pensive look. Like he was simultaneously present and removed. Thinking so intently about the reasons for Lance’s behaviour he felt like he might short-circuit.  
  
So he told himself, like he did every other time, that Lance’s intentions were nothing beyond friendship, with Keith kept at a safe distance.  
  
He leaned forward with Lance’s notebook in hand, and said, “Sure.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woooo!! Let me know what you guys think!


	3. Thinking of U

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a little heavier a little hotter and a little fluffier

 

Keith felt he was suffocating. 

In a good way. Sort of. But still suffocating. He wasn’t able to process what was happening, let alone the pleasure he was feeling. He couldn’t begin to understand it. He couldn’t eve-

Lance bobbed his head lower. Swallowed more of him down his throat. He looked like he was enjoying sucking Keith’s dick as much as, if not more, than Keith was enjoying himself.

He felt himself whine, throwing his head back. His hips bucked. He fisted his hands in Lance’s hair. “ _ Oh god, Lance- _ ” Lance moaned around his length and Keith nearly lost his mind. “ _ Lance, I _ -”

Then, everything dissolved. And morphed, and dissected. Came together and apart into nothing.

Keith woke up sweating. He usually woke up sweating, but “usually” didn’t entail explicit dreams about Lance.

The dreams he did manage were beyond nightmarish. They were every time he slept. Fortunately or not he didn’t sleep very often.

_ Figures _ , Keith thought. The first time he’d slept in four days and he’d dreamt that Lance wanted nothing more than to be on his knees with his mouth around Keith’s-

He really needed to stop thinking about it. He was rock hard, and it didn’t help that the strange almost-lucidity he experienced in his dreams made everything feel very, very real. He could still feel Lance’s mouth, his hands gripping his hips. Taking Keith so deeply into the back of his throat.

_ Good god.  _ Keith held his head in his hands, sitting on the edge of his bed. He ignored his painful erection and collected himself. He checked the time and saw it was after six. So he’d slept for about forty minutes. Better than nothing.

He needed to get it together because Lance would be home soon and that meant they’d be studying together as per usual. He laid back on his bed with his eyes closed, breathing deeply, waiting for his arousal to get lost. He wasn’t going to be giving it any attention.  
  


_________________

 

Lance was having a shit day. A really shit day. It was like he was simultaneously melting, heavy and viscous, and transparent, not quite there and slowly fading further. He wanted to go home. All throughout his shift babysitting he had to pour all of his concentration into smiling for it not to show to the kids, Jas and Lito. They could still tell he wasn’t in great shape because though he was friendly and patiently listened to all their long stories like he always did, he wasn’t the bombastic and engaged Lance they knew. Lito had asked if he was tired.    
  
He was taking the bus back now, headphones in his ear but not listening to anything, head down. His phone buzzed. It was from his mom.    
  
_ “Thinking of U… estas bien? te amo”  _ it read, complete with her signature kiss emoji.  

He swallowed the lump in this throat that always came when his mom was loving during hard times.   His eyelids felt like they were made of lead. He appreciated the text more than he could communicate, and that pressure made him pocket his phone into his jacket. He’d answer it later when the stakes felt lower.    
  
He spent the rest of the bus ride in a sort of trance, focusing on the chatter as a sensory experience, and by the time he’d walked home, all the personality he had cultivated for the kids was gone. Or maybe it was more that he finally felt safe enough not to fake it.    
  
He came through the front door quietly, setting his bag down with a soft thump, and padded into the kitchen to stare into the fridge absently. Nothing looked quite appetizing but his blood sugar was getting low.    
  
He realized that he looked forward to seeing Keith, probably knowing that the comfortable social interactions he had with him would feel soothing and distracting in a way not many other things could be. He grabbed the bag of grapes and carried them with him to Keith’s bedroom door where he knocked plainly. 

Keith would normally answer the door himself, and keep the interactions that happened within his room to a minimum. He was private to an extreme fault, but at least he was self-aware.

This time, however, he was pretty worn out, and for that reason the degree of “proper” to which he held himself to would suffer. Still, it wasn’t as if he was indecent. Just in black lounge pants and a tank top that was particularly tight.

Plus he was still half hard, and didn’t want to see any looks of horror from Lance should he stand up and fail to hide it.

So he remained on the bed, laying with his hands behind his head, as he called out, “Come in.”  

Lance did, popping a grape into his mouth. As his energy mingled with Keith’s, he felt more grounded, more real. An anxiety he didn’t know he was experiencing quieted, but he was still incredibly low. 

“Hey,” he said, tossing Keith a grape. “We still studying?”

Keith slowly shifted his eyes over to Lance after he’d caught the grape in his mouth. “That’s the plan.” Keith immediately saw, felt rather, Lance’s heavy energy. Something was weighing on him, and Keith eyed him, deciding whether or not to ask what it was.

Lance nodded mellowly. “Nice catch.” 

Keith decided to ask. Lance never acted this openly melancholic. “Unless you don’t feel up for it?” Keith rolled off of his back to face Lance. “You look pretty low.”

_ Is… Is Keith openly caring about me?  _ At the least, Lance wasn’t expecting him to be so forward, and he didn’t think he was displaying any behaviors that might indicate he was feeling so bad. He felt exposed, like he was transparent and Keith could look right into him. He sat on the bed. 

“Yeah, I’m fine.” he deflected. “I’m just a little tired.”  He stretched and yawned. 

“You’re not acting just a little tired,” Keith answered, a little too quickly. He sat up and crossed his arms over his lap. “You don’t have to talk about anything.” Keith quieted his nerves and ignored the many many parts of himself that were screaming to stop extending vulnerability, and then said, “But if you want to, I’ll listen.”

Lance felt like a rubber band stretched tight, about to snap. He blinked to keep overwhelmed tears from welling up in his eyes and swallowed hard again, breathing through his nose slow and steady. Acts of kindness made him prickle when he was distressed.    
  
“Um,” he started, but he didn’t know what to say. Keith and Lance didn’t really have these kinds of moments -- Lance never thought Keith would have been interested in them. He was afraid that Keith was only feeling obligated to ask, not genuinely interested, but everything he was saying showed an honest concern, so he fought that insecurity. 

He genuinely didn’t know where to begin. “I’m just having a hard day.” he said, but he knew that still wasn’t enough. “It’s - uh -” he looked into Keith’s eyes for a moment as if to be sure he was still allowed to open up.    
  
“It’s kinda... The anniversary of my brother’s death today.” he was avoiding eye contact at all costs by now, unable to endure the sympathy looks people have given him his whole life about it. “It was a long time ago, though. It’s just always a hard day.” he said the last part factually, like recounting a statement from a science textbook. 

Keith was silent for as long as could be considered appropriate. He didn’t know what he could say or do that would be of any significance. He couldn’t think of anything that could remedy what he’d just learned. It was very difficult to comfort others when you couldn’t understand their pain. Keith didn’t know loss. He’d never had anything to lose.

Still, Lance had extended a great amount of trust in telling Keith what he did. So Keith placed a hand on Lance’s back, people liked that, right? and said, “I know that being sorry doesn’t do anything for you. But I’m sorry.” A deep breath, “That’s,” Keith paused, choosing his words carefully, “really rough.”

Well, the rubber band snapped -- Lance brushed away a few stray tears with a clenched fist (it’s still cool when you do it like that because it’s kind of like punching the tears away) -- but he felt better now than before. Keith’s reaction wasn’t condescending or so sappy it felt superficial; it touched him in a very respectful but meaningful way. It was promptly time to break the tension. 

“That’s ok, I like it rough.” he cracked, wagging an eyebrow dramatically. He was too emotionally drained to pay any mind to a separate kind of tension that might have created, only trying to give a gesture to show that things really were ok. “Hey, you’re kind of a nice guy, you know that?” 

Keith couldn’t help but tense, his eyes widening just a fraction, his fists clenching and unclenching across his lap. His mind raced and he stared at Lance with his mouth slightly parted. 

Lance was just breaking the tension like he always did. Normal. Maybe Lance did actually like it rough but that was irrelevant. Keith wanted to give his own dick a glare for having the nerve to twitch in response to the comment.

He eventually got out, “Yeah. Kind of.”

Lance didn’t notice; he was still a bit misty-eyed and he had to sniffle to keep his nose from running. He stared at his lap and let there be a pause for a moment, taking in how much better he felt, a barely noticeable smile tugging at the end of his lips.    
  
Then he pivoted his head and made direct eye contact, earnest and appreciative.    
  
“Seriously, Keith. Thank you.” 

Keith jerked his head away. He didn’t know how to comfort people, but he especially didn’t know what to do when people looked at him like Lance was looking at him right now. Like he was good, or something. An actual nice person. 

Whatever. It didn’t matter. Lance’s grief was far worse. Keith’s face was stony as he thought about how inappropriate it was to still be half-hard in his pants. His body was ridiculous sometimes.

He could smell Lance next to him. He turned his head.

“You’re welcome.” Keith willed himself to relax, ineffectively. “And don’t mention it.”

Lance thought the combination of sincerity and tenderness was making Keith uncomfortable, but he didn’t take it personally -- he knew Keith had issues with these sorts of things, and in this moment, he was fond of that trait too. To ease the pressure off of him, he jumped up off the bed and made his way to the door, indicating that it was study time, and as he treaded he pulled out his phone.

“Also dude check out this meme I saw on my way home, you’re going to hate it.”

Keith stood up reflexively, and then jammed his hands in his pockets to keep his pants from outlining anything explicit. He also was in awe, though not necessarily surprised, at how quickly Lance could go from grieving to wanting to show him a meme. But that was Lance for you.

“I’m sure I will.” He answered, following Lance out of his bedroom. Then he added, as nonchalantly as he could manage (which was pretty damn nonchalant, all things considered), “I’ll be right back.” He glanced at Lance briefly before disappearing down the hall towards the bathroom.

“Wha-?” he began, at first befuddled by the departure before he noted that he was heading towards the bathroom. “Oh, yeah. Stay safe in there.” he jokingly called out as Keith’s back already disappeared through the threshold. He seated himself at their study table and pretended he was doing his homework.

Keith kept himself from groaning at Lance’s comment.  _ Yeah I’ll fucking try  _ he thought to himself as he yanked his zipper down and his back thudded against the bathroom door. Lance made him feel so many things in so many different directions he didn’t know what to even make of it. Especially given that his emotional range was typically subject only to grayscale.

Lance painted it red.

Keith grit his teeth in literal aggravation as he jerked himself quickly. He couldn’t believe that he  _ actually  _ had to excuse himself to get off because the damn thing would just not go away. He felt even more aggravated that it was in the middle of Lance telling him about his dead. Brother.

He would have cringed in disgust with himself but he was too busy clenching his teeth so as not to moan.

Keith had no idea what had gotten into him. He usually just ignored an erection if he got one. They pissed him off. And his libido just had to go and be ridiculously high, for whatever reason.

And maybe he was a bit of a masochist. 

He tried to think of nothing. But when he came, hard, he thought of the Lance from his dream, on his knees.

Keith forced himself, with every ounce of control he had, to stop thinking about it as he caught his breath, as he cleaned himself off, and up until the moment he left the bathroom. Keith thought of this as he walked up to the dining table, pulled out a chair, and sat down as if nothing, at all, ever, had happened.

He was good at that part.  
  
Their study session was almost standard after that -- Lance being goofy and unfocused and obnoxious, Keith helpful but simmering under a controlled exterior, a little banter here and there amongst the productivity -- but this time, their routine, at least to Lance, felt softer, more familiar. He didn’t want to be anywhere else. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!!! thanks for all the swell comments on this so far y'all it means a lot!!  <3 <3 <3


	4. No Need to Be Shy

Keith waited patiently for his Neurological Processes and Disorders lecture to end. It was his last class of the week, he had had work earlier in the morning, he guessed what was around six hours of sleep, cumulatively, since Monday, and he hadn’t eaten, on accident of course, since dinner as of yesterday.   
  
Still, he waited patiently, taking notes that he knew he’d need later, for the hour to be up. When his professor dismissed the class, he was one of the first out of the door, making it out of the hall and into the fresh air in minutes. He walked through campus glassy eyed, keys in hand, his body running on autopilot swimmingly. He was usually on autopilot. His body was good at not shutting off, ever.  
  
So he headed toward the garage where he’d parked his bike, ready to have nothing to do for the night. Maybe Lance would ask to hang out, and then Keith could do something pointless and fun with him like an actual human being.  
  
Speaking of which, as he crossed the courtyard between the library and the garage he heard what could only have been Lance calling out his name. He turned, mildly surprised, toward the source of the sound. Lance came bounding down the path towards him, backpack slung over one shoulder. Keith kept himself from smiling and waited with his hands in his pockets.  
  
“KEITH!! KEITH!! HEY, KEITHAROO! KEITHINGTON!!” Lance was yelling, all the way up until they were feet apart. He was a bit winded by the time he caught up, supporting himself on his knees. “Keith, hey, it’s me. Could you hear me?” he asked breathlessly.  
  
“Uh yeah,” Keith looked down at Lance huffing and puffing. “Pretty clearly.” Keith would address the nicknames later.  
  
“Ugh, why didn’t you say anything or wave or some- you know what, it doesn’t matter. Listen,” his eyes were sparkling as he spoke now, “There’s a party tonight…” he paused to build suspense as if he were about to drop a bomb, “at the Altean mansion.” He raised his eyebrows and gave a wry grin, like he’d just done something really impressive.  
  
“Oh,” Keith studied Lance’s excitement with, for once, a genuine smile. “You wanna go or something?”  
  
“Hell yeah I do! You’re gonna come right?” he was smiling too now, near radiating with his energy.  
  
Keith thought for a moment. He probably should take it easy. Go home and do whatever necessary in order to sleep straight through the weekend, lest his overdriven body finally break into a million pieces. But he didn’t want to rest. And Lance sounded like he really wanted him to go. Keith didn’t think too long about that.    
  
“Yeah alright,” Keith blinked, “Sounds great.” Lance gave a hearty whoop and Keith smiled wryly. “You could have texted me.”  
  
“Well, I’m on my way to class now but I saw your mullet across the courtyard and I just thought this would be better.” he shrugged coolly.    
  
“I don’t have a mullet,” Keith retaliated before he could stop himself. “I’m starting think you just have a thing for my hair.” His filter was all but gone and he couldn’t help the comment, regardless of implications.   
  
Lance balked. “I do. Not. have a. Thing. For your hair.” he stressed in disbelief.  
  
Keith felt like something inside him had dried up, even though Lance had only said one of his standard lines. He was simply making the boundary of “rival” clear. Keith knew he would respond that way. He shoved his hands in his pockets and clenched and unclenched his fists habitually.  
  
“Yeah, I believe you.”  
  
Something didn’t sit quite right with Lance about this exchange, a buzzing anxiety forming, a disatisfaction he he could not name, but he wouldn’t allow himself to dwell on it -- at least not in front of Keith. Lance couldn’t help but stray his gaze for just a moment to reflect on Keith’s silky, raven locks, shining in the daylight. He realized he hadn’t seen much of Keith in the daylight.   
  
_Fuck, he really does look like a vampire,_ Lance thought, also sweeping the plethora of trashy vampire novels he’d consumed in high school under a mental rug to never be thought of again.   
  
“We meeting back at the house?”    
  
“Yeah, sure,” Keith’s chest felt tight, and he hated it. It was just his exhaustion. “I’ll see you later.”

___________________________________  
  


Lance’s classes were long and tedious and he took the bus home around 8pm (he liked to cram all his school into as few days as possible so he could either relax or work on off days) but it was a Thursday which was kind of like a Friday since there were no more classes for the week. The whole time he managed his stress by looking forward to the night ahead -- it’d been awhile since everyone got together and partied and by the time he got home he was filled with relief, uninhibited, and almost vibrating with anticipation.   
  
He flung the door open, throwing his keys, and immediately dropping his backpack. “Party tiiiiiiiiime!!” he called out in celebration.    
  
The response to his announcement was unusually quiet, even for Keith, and Lance soon saw why. It was weird to see Keith in the state that he was in, but there he was, crumpled on the floor of the living room. Unresponsive. He didn’t look comfortable, like he’d ended up there on accident. He was wearing some athletic shorts and nothing else, shirt and shoes in a pile nearby as if he’d barely gotten them off before collapsing.  
  
“Oh fuck!!” Lance cried once his gaze landed on Keith’s limp body, panic jolting down his spine. He surveyed the room, noticing Keith’s exercise gear. Maybe he’d pushed himself too far? Lance had doubts about Keith’s human needs before; the vampire jokes were funny and all, but he had genuinely wondered how the other functioned when he seemed to be up at all hours and most of his meals consisted of coffee. He ran over, immediately going to grab him, hesitating, and then going for it anyway.  
  
He shook him gently. “Keith! Keith? Hey, man, what’s going on?”   Lance’s breathing came shallowly, eyes flitting over Keith’s pale form, one hand firmly on Keith’s clammy bicep.  
  
Keith’s head lolled to the side as Lance shook him. His breathing stuttered in his throat and then his eyes cracked open briefly. Then they shot open, and Keith sat up frantically. He grabbed his face with his hands, as if to see if he was still a physical being. His eyes were wider than Lance had ever seen.  
  
After his breathing calmed, his eyes shifted to Lance’s hand around his arm and his look of intense concern. He brought a hand over his face again, sighing heavily, and then spoke from behind it, “Uh. Hey Lance.”    
  
“Kei-” he started in a strangled voice,  but shook his head and cut off short when he knew his tone would both reveal his fear and stress Keith out when he was already in poor shape. He took a breath. “Hey, are you safe? Do you need medical attention?” he asked very seriously, more seriously than Keith had ever heard him.   
  
Keith had the nerve to look indignant and surprised. “No, why?” Then, to counter the obvious absurdity of asking why, he added, “I’m fine.” His voice was hoarse.  
  
“No, you’re not.” Lance asserted, reinforcing a gravity to the situation. Keith looked like he was going to be argumentative again but then settled on a frown.  
  
“Let’s get to the couch,” Lance said decidedly, snaking an arm around Keith’s side, and draping his weak arm around his own shoulder before lifting them both up.   
  
Before they stepped to the couch Keith faltered, strangling back a cough and clutching his side. His eyes looked strained with pain, focusing on nothing. Then he slowly straightened out and sat down with an offensive amount of casualness.   
  
Lance looked skeptical, worried, confused and offended all at once, but promptly retrieved a big glass of water, an applesauce cup, and two pieces of bread from the kitchen. When he got back, he sat down and gave Keith confrontational eye contact as he passed the water.   
  
“You’re going to drink and eat this, tough guy.” he stated. A fact.  
  
Keith actually looked like he was going to protest again, but then he took the glass and drank as much as he could. It felt like half melted lead in his stomach.  
  
“I don’t like applesauce,” Keith said as he took the cup and began eating robotically.                    
  
Lance snorted at that, but pressed further. “Seriously, man, what’s going on?” he asked, concerned but not nearly as stressed as before -- color was coming back to Keith’s face and his eyes weren’t as deadened.  
  
Keith crushed the empty cup in his hand. His eyes shifted to Lance. “What do you mean?”  
  
Lance handed him one of the pieces of bread with raised eyebrows. When that didn’t get him a response, he began to imitate Keith poorly.  
  
“Oh, why hello Lance,” he raised the pitch of his voice considerably,  “Dont mind me, I’m just dying on the floor here, nothing unusual about that. I just love to pass out inexplicably and not explain anything at all.”   
  
Keith stared at Lance quite vacantly, his mouth slightly open. When he spoke it had no fight, just gravel, “You know my voice is deeper than yours, right?” Keith took the bread without affording it any attention. Then, he sighed, “I’m not dying. I’m just tired.”  
  
Lance’s brows furrowed at the voice comment, but instead replied to the more pressing issue. “I get tired all the time and manage not to strip down and lose consciousness, buddy.” he realized that had more bite to it than intended and sighed. “Look, I’m really worried about you.” he realized that had a bit more sentimentality than he was comfortable with expressing and swallowed. He attempted to think of some sort of smartass comment to brush it off but came short, so he settled for rubbing the back of his neck and averting eye contact.  
  
Keith wanted to say a lot of things. Mainly ask why Lance cared one bit about him. But he didn’t. He fought to get the words out against the orchestra of physical pain his body had returned to as soon as he’d regained consciousness. He even managed what he thought could potentially be read as a smile, “I didn’t strip, Lance. I’m not naked.”  
  
Keith paused then, realizing that it wouldn’t be that unusual for Lance to feel uncomfortable with him being less clothed than normal. Right. Lance probably didn’t care to see any of that. Gay sphere. “I got a bit overheated,” He reached for his crumpled shirt on the floor in front of the coffee table, starting to pull it on. “There’s nothing to worry about. Really.”  
  
“No - I didn’t mean it like that.” Lance clicked his tongue. “You don’t have to put it back on,  I’m sure it’s all sweaty and hot. Believe it or not, I’ve seen nipples before.” He kept to himself that if the situation wasn’t so dire he would have appreciated Keith’s nipples, and abs for that matter. How did they wind up talking about this instead of Keith’s failing health?   He was getting frustrated with himself.  
  
“Look, Gothy McTuffStuff, you gotta start taking care of yourself. How much had you eaten today?”  
  
Keith faltered, shirt over his arms. He stared at Lance blankly. Then he swiftly tossed it back to the ground, having not nearly enough energy to think about whether or not Lance actually cared to see him shirtless. He registered Lance’s chosen misnomer this time and almost wanted to laugh. Instead he fell back against the couch, looking at the ceiling and seeing a million insomnia induced variations of light. His held felt as if it was being split down the middle, which wasn’t out of the ordinary.  
  
He didn’t know what to tell Lance. He could have told him the truth, but what did it matter? Lance had his own problems, and Keith was sure that his were simple in comparison. So he couldn’t eat or sleep. He was still alive.  
  
A dozen sharp pains like thin razors cut through his lungs as he breathed. Normal.  
  
He suffered but it didn’t matter. If it was really so bad his body would give in. If it was really _so bad then he’d fall asleep at night and eat when he was supposed to and not keep running and running and running an-  
  
_ Keith swallowed hard. “I ate last night. Didn’t really get around to it today.”    
  
“Last night?!” Lance griped, at first flabbergasted but quickly returning to a similar panic as before, albeit this one more controlled. Concerned eyes flitted over Keith, searching for a solution. “Hey, I -” He couldn’t really find one, at least not one that seemed to suffice. There was a somber silent moment.   
  
“I’m really sorry you’re dealing with this.” he finally said, gently this time. He meant it.   
  
“Dealing with what?” Keith returned a little too defensively.  
  
“This.” Lance replied in turn, gesturing at Keith. “You’re exhausted all the time, right? You’re always up. I can hear you opening and closing doors and playing music and stuff. And, I don’t know, I guess I thought these past couple weeks you were snacking secretly, like maybe blood or something since you don’t have food in the fridge. But you’re just not eating, right? ” He mused, rambling mostly to himself as he passed him the other piece of bread. “I guess I just hadn’t pieced together that you really are human.”   
  
Keith tore off a piece of the bread with his mouth and swallowed. Glue going down his throat. He was ever so slightly put off at Lance keeping up the vampire thing, but really just amused.   
  
“I eat.” Keith fixed Lance with a look. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be here, right?” He finished the bread and then drank the rest of the water to get it down. “And I’m not always up. I just-” He faltered. This was new territory. Keith didn’t talk about these kinds of things. People didn’t ask and he didn’t tell. Much of anything.  
  
Let alone his personal strife. But now he was talking about it. And to Lance. Lance who thought he was an emo vampire and had a mullet and was a walking hot topic advertisement. Keith swallowed his prickly, bitter insecurity.  
  
He sighed. “I just don’t usually sleep very well.”   
  
Lance let out a contemplative hum and then said, “Have you ever seen a psychiatrist for this stuff? Mine has me on meds that keep my moods in order.”  
  
Keith couldn’t keep in his laughter at that. It was rough and self-deprecating. Then his face fell, almost as immediately as he’d started laughing, to the usual slate that it was. “I’ve tried.” Thinking about medicine always filled Keith with a quiet fury. He kept it out of his expression as best as he could. “They’ve given me everything from ambien to horse tranquilizers.” He smiled dangerously at Lance. “I’m a special case.”    
  
Lance nodded pensively. His jaw clenched and unclenched while he thought, like it was a tricky math problem they studied over. Realizing the answers were not as easily concluded, he said the only thing he felt he could.  
  
“If you ever need any help, or for me to change up house rules to help, or anything like that, let me know, ok?” He was already devising how to feed Keith sneakily without him protesting too hard, and that’s why he didn't mention it.  
  
Keith was silent for probably longer than appropriate. He was surprised at Lance’s kindness. If he could call them rivals and find Keith as displeasing as he did and still treat him with compassion then Keith should have been able to do the same. He was trying to do the same.  
  
Keith wanted to be strong enough to ask for help, but he knew he wasn’t. So he eventually nodded, and said, “Thanks.”  
  
Lance gave a worried but warm smile. “We should maybe stay home instead of partying tonight, right?”  
  
“Nah,” Keith answered immediately. “This happens-” Keith hesitated, realizing the information would only hurt his case, “...Like every other night.” Trying to keep himself removed from the situation was hard when the facts were a bit severe.    
  
Lance looked skeptical, but didn’t want to push his luck with the whole “i’m butting into your problems and you should listen to me” thing they had going on, and he didn’t want to impede on Keith’s personal autonomy, and he really wanted to party, with Keith. He made a note to keep his tunes down at night and pay attention to Keith’s wellbeing and checked in with a quick, “You sure?”  
  
“Yeah. I want to have fun, or whatever.” Keith stood up and stretched his arms behind his back and then across his chest. He bent forward and touched his toes, trying to get his body to wake up. He needed no less than three painkillers. Keith eyed the empty water glass on the coffee table, and suddenly felt aware of the fact that he was wearing very little. He wasn’t self-conscious exactly, just aware. Keith wondered if Lance thought much of it.  
  
He grabbed his shirt and shoes from the floor and then faced Lance, “I’m gonna get in the shower. What time are we leaving?”  
  
Lance did think much of it, or at least reacted to the stimuli. Keith was built with firm but rounded edges, lean and toned, muscle cuts waxing and waning as he moved his body, skin almost luminous, and then there was the matter of his ass, also round and firm and fucking on display as he literally bent over -- Becoming conscious of what he was doing, Lance abruptly jerked his head to the side and stared at his cuticles. He was bi, and Keith was good looking, but it wasn’t like that.  It couldn’t be -- it was absolutely clear that Keith wasn’t interested in him in that way, if at all. He didn’t allow himself to pay attention to the hopeful songbird in his head that chirped about how they’d effortlessly hung out everyday for a good couple weeks now, which had to indicate that Keith enjoyed his company to some extent. They were rivals, and friends, and that was that. Nevermind the wet dreams or the good looks, those were natural anyway -- he just had a high libido.  
  
Realizing he’d been zoning out, staring at a place on the wall, he finally let his eyes back on Keith. “Uh, whenever you’re ready, really.”  
  
“I shouldn’t be too long” Keith started walking towards the bathroom but about three steps in he turned around, impulsively seizing on a very instinctual feeling that he otherwise properly ignored, “And Lance, a picture lasts longer.”   
  
Lance’s jaw dropped, but before anything could spill out of his mouth, noise or otherwise, Keith was already in the bathroom. __

_______________________________   
  


About twenty minutes later Keith was getting dressed in his room, preparing himself for extended social interaction.   
  
He didn’t mind parties. He knew that he benefited from them in some way or another. But the presence of many physical bodies tended to both exhaust and suffocate him at a much faster rate than average.  
  
People were loud. Voices, heartbeats, breathing, electrical signals and raw heat energy. Keith’s senses were too sensitive and too pervasive to not be all but overwhelmed by the information. Fortunately he was very practiced at reining them in. Plus his exhaustion allowed for a comfortable, feathery layer of dissociation to blanket his experience of reality. So it goes.  
  
He pulled on his boots and then grabbed his jacket from the back of his desk chair. On his way to the living room he stopped by the bathroom to look at himself. He usually did this not to consider his looks but to gauge the level of sick and tired that he appeared. Tonight was admittedly worse. His skin was stark white and the dark circles severe. His eyes were slate instead of their usual blue-violet spectrum.  
  
Keith inspected the rest of his body and experienced a sick kind of irony in noticing how especially defined his muscles looked. His shirt was tight around his arms and shoulders and his pants seemed to be hugging his thighs and ass more thoroughly. Keith almost scowled. He was putting on muscle mass even while his body was practically decomposing. He studied the lines of his muscles and bone definition, hardened by his exhaustion.  
  
He stopped staring at himself in the mirror to avoid any further feelings of unreality and reached under the sink for his cologne, spraying just a hint of it onto his chest. He slung his jacket over his shoulder and exited the bathroom, pulling on his gloves as he approached Lance in the living room.  
  
“You ready?”  
  
For just a few seconds, Lance didn’t pry his eyes up from a game app he was playing on his phone, but by the time he had finished saying the word “Yeah!” he had swiftly closed out and turned up to look at Keith with an excited smile. He leapt up to his feet and did a little jig.   
  
“Party time~” he sung, only dropping the little show when he gave Keith a quick once over and gave a “not bad” face-- “You sure cleaned up,” he said, looking genuinely impressed. So recently he’d seen Keith near zombie-hood and now, albeit tired, he still looked good and put-together.  
  
“Yeah, I took a shower.” Keith answered dryly. He discreetly observed Lance as he fastened his gloves. He’d changed from what he wore earlier, but nothing out of the ordinary. Still, he smelled good. He’d shaved too, or moisturized, or something, while Keith was getting ready in his bedroom, because he was glowing bronze more than usual. Keith could admit Lance knew how to take care of his skin.  
  
He tore his eyes away and stepped over to the kitchen counter where he’d set his helmet and keys earlier that evening. Wordlessly, he took the helmet and held it out to Lance.   
  
Lance just stared at it curiously and said, “What are you giving me that for?”   
  
“Offering you a ride,” Keith tilted his head, “Unless you were planning on taking your bicycle.”  
  
Lance hadn’t thought about it yet.  “Oh! I, I-- uh-- I--” he stammered, “I hadn’t thought about it.”   
  
A million racing thoughts, all galloping around the track in his brain. This was certainly a gesture of kindness on Keith’s part -- or maybe politeness? It showed a degree of closeness and trust in order to not just agree with but  even initiate that close of contact-- oh my god, he was going to be straddling Keith from behind. They were going to be spooning, but sitting, and with a lot of wind and vibrations  -- and he remembered in a flash the recent Keith related boner incident caused by his dream -- and Keith had to have thought about these implications, I mean that’s in the romcoms, right? The bad boy gives the protag a ride on his motorcycle, or something, and, and, and, now he was blushing.   Why was he always blushing?   
  
Keith was just being polite. Lance cleared his throat, kept it casual, smoothed out his shirt. “I’d really appreciate one, thanks for offering.” He accepted the helmet. “Don’t you need one of these too?” he quirked an eyebrow.   
  
Keith pulled on his jacket, smiling. “Yeah.” He turned and grabbed his keys off the counter. “It’d be nice if I had another one.” Lance was flustered, and Keith was fueled by it. He could guess many reasons for Lance to blush, and he was starting to get lax on keeping them out of his head.  
  
“Alright!! Altean manor here we come!!” Lance chimed, fastening the helmet and trying not to think of how it smelled like Keith’s shampoo. Despite his stress, he was actually excited about this, excited about the party and about this ride, excited about the creeping feeling of adventure, and he scurried out the door to eye Keith’s bike.   
  
“I’ve never been on one of these before.” he admitted.  
  
“I know,” Keith said, slinging his leg over the side. Then he just looked at Lance expectantly with a slight quirk in his mouth.  
  
Lance sucked his teeth but obliged, sliding behind Keith and grumbling “Do you have to be so smug?” as he wrapped his arms around the other’s middle. He made sure to keep his crotch a good couple inches away but leaned his chest into Keith and rested his face on his shoulder.  
  
Keith turned the key in the ignition and then spoke over the growl of the engine. “No need to be shy.” He could feel Lance’s slight hesitation in their proximity. “Unless you want to fall off.”  
  
A shiver ran down Lance’s spine in spite of himself, a reaction to that particular kind of aloof but harmless arrogance that always managed to really do it for him. He was thankful that Keith couldn’t see him. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t think he could trust his voice, counting on being able to blame the engine for his unusual lack of response, but he scooted his pelvis forward, now snugly against Keith.  
  
Keith offered Lance a look over his shoulder before all but peeling out of the parking lot, turning onto the main road and picking up speed. He’d keep it relatively slow for Lance’s sake. Relatively. He took a smooth right turn and couldn’t help but enjoy the feeling of Lance holding onto him for dear life.  
  
What started as a tight anxiety for Lance bubbled down into simmering exhilaration -- it felt like a dream, like the world had become more colorful all at once, or that he could suddenly notice the colors already there. He was overwhelmed with it, and though he clutched tightly to Keith’s hardened form, he was flashing a wide beaming smile and containing a brimming giddiness.   
  
At a particularly satisfying turn he couldn’t help but laugh heartily and crane his head up for a “Wooooooo!”  He felt like putty, easily leaning into Keith, like that’s where he belonged most as the wind whipped past them.   
  
Keith laughed at how good of a time Lance seemed to already be having, though it certainly couldn’t be heard over the wind and the bike as he took them past their college’s sprawl and into downtown. He took every turn, dip, and twist in the roads expertly, and he even went the speed limit. Barely. He was enjoying Lance’s enthusiasm so he couldn’t help but push it just a bit.  
  
The engine hummed as slowed to a stop for a red light. Then Keith shook the hair out of his eyes, he should have put it up, to glance over his shoulder and make sure Lance still had all of his limbs.  
  
“This is cool!” Lance declared a bit too loud because of the sudden change in volume. He pulled his arms from around Keith and put them behind him on the seat, leaning back and smiling at Keith with a warm fondness -- no snark, no bite.  
  
Keith revved the engine and grinned at Lance before pouring back into traffic. He knew it didn’t seem like it, but he waited the millisecond necessary to feel that Lance’s arms were around him again before taking off. Though he did highly appreciate Lance’s yelp of surprise. Keith also didn’t expect the ride there to have been occupied nearly entirely by the thought and feeling of Lance pressed against his back. Lance was holding him so tight.  
  
 _Well,_ Keith thought, _Good._ He decelerated as they went under an overpass at the outskirts of the city and began to enter the wealthy suburbia that situated itself by the bay.  
  
When they arrived at Allura’s house -- unreasonably impressive in its size and decor (they had a fountain and massive flower garden right in the front) -- Lance was practically glowing. They’d been here a lot by now, so the effect wasn’t nearly as striking as it had been the first couple times Lance had seen this place, but it still stirred up some sort of feeling in him.  
  
He removed the helmet, shaking out his hair to make it look boyishly disheveled again and handed it to Keith, then nodded decidedly.  
  
“Let’s get schwasty.” 


	5. Good Enough to Eat

 

“Pidge there’s no way you’re giving me a draw four card for the third time in a row.”  
  
“Hunk it’s just the card’s I’ve got,” Pidge answered flippantly before taking a long drink of mountain dew.  
  
“You might be telling the truth, but I’m coming for you.” Hunk added kindly. “Your turn Keith.”  
  
The four of them, being Lance, Keith, Pidge, and Hunk, were playing a few rounds of slightly sober uno while Shiro made punch in the kitchen per Allura’s request. There were more guests at the party, bobbing in and out of the room, nodding their heads to the perfectly loud music or chatting amongst themselves -- a lot of Allura’s weird-cool friends from student government and all the other clubs she was in more or less ignored the group. They were gathered in the living room around the expensive cut glass coffee table and sitting on the huge black leather couch sectional. Keith felt pleasantly absurd playing uno and drinking beer in the setting of Allura’s mansion.  
  
Keith eyed his hand one last time before resignedly placing his card down. He didn’t necessarily want to get Lance specifically with all of his bad cards, but the guy always seemed to sit next to him. “Give me your hand, Lance.”  
  
Lance accosted him with a dirty look and a short “wow” but handed them over, switching with Keith’s ludicrously bad hand. “Aw man, come on.” he reorganized all the cards -- he and Keith just so happened to organize their hands in the exact opposite way. He pursed his lips.   
  
“Keith’s got all green cards now by the way.” Lance mentioned as if he were talking about the weather. He played down a single number card, displeased.  
  
“Oooh, dang Lance! Cold!” Hunk commented, loving it. He was the lightest weight of them all, only half way through a beer and a hit and beginning to be more feisty and physical than usual.  
  
“Yeah, and not really fair.” Pidge added while placing down a red instead of a green.  
  
Hunk put a reverse but then Pidge countered it with another reverse, and Hunk conceded with a blue seven.  
  
Keith said nothing as he drew two cards before getting a draw four. Well, Lance had told everybody his hand, he kind of deserved it. Keith tossed the card down with no comment and stared at Lance while he drank straight from the handle of vodka that Allura had left up for grabs after she’d taken half for the punch.  
  
Lance was glaring daggers at this point, and after he picked up four cards, he put down his own reverse card so that the flow of rotation would be Lance unto Keith now. He was gonna get it. He chugged his beer and crushed the can. “Oh, you’re on, Mullet.”  
  
Keith smirked. Normally he wouldn’t be so openly self-satisfied but he had just traded hands with Lance so he wasn’t sure what Lance thought he was going to surprise him with. Keith put down a green two and Hunk made good on his promise to get Pidge.  
  
“Draw two.”  
  
“Yeah I see what it says. Your turn Lance, and try to take us somewhere.” Pidge had little patience for lulling card games.    
  
Lance only put down a number, but it was blue, and he knew Keith would have to pick up from the draw pile. It was impossible for a human to look more pleased with himself.  
  
Keith stared Lance down while he drew three before getting a wild card. “Red.” He put it down.  
  
Lance was just about to start complaining loudly about Keith’s weird uno mind-games but Allura came back from mingling in the kitchen with a single raised eyebrow and a huge bottle of champagne.   
  
“You’re playing uno?” she condescended, arms crossed, her distaste for their childish antics not at all hidden in her expression or tone. Her energy directed extra judgment to the growing antagonism between Lance and Keith but she didn’t speak of it.    
  
“How about you do something… different than that.” she said it as a statement, not a question, as she handed the bottle to Hunk.  “Hunk, will you do us the honor?”   
  
“Ooh, yeah, let me get that for you.” Hunk smiled, genuinely always happy to help, and popped it open without spilling a drop. He politely handed the bottle back to Allura, who began to pour the expensive bubbling alcohol into nearby fancy fluted glasses and hand them out to everyone of age. Pidge began to devise ways to swipe a glass without anyone noticing.   
  
Now distracted from uno, Lance was peering around the room, eyeing the decor more than the partiers. “I can’t believe we're actually under a chandelier right now.”  
  
Keith took his glass from Allura and stared at the liquid. Champagne wasn’t his favorite at all. Too thin and sweet. He drank half the glass at once. Then he couldn’t help but let his eyes wander to and from Lance. Lance was oblivious, so Keith didn’t think much of staring for seconds at a time. He knew he couldn’t contribute much conversation wise tonight because of exhaustion, and studying Lance was one of his favorite past times.  
  
 _Sue me._ Keith thought, taking his eyes off of Lance’s inhumanly genuine smile and staring at the marbled spiral staircase at the corner of the living room.  
  
“You’ve seen this chandelier plenty of times, Lance.” Allura said, unfazed.   
  
Lance let the conversation flow naturally, responding with the faux charisma he always used. “And yet, its beauty enchants me every time, just like yours.”   
  
Before Allura could even roll her eyes, Lance already realized this fake-flirting, which used to feel casual and standard, instead felt… bad? Weird? His own comment didn’t sit right in his stomach, but he ignored it. Both Hunk and Pidge sighed, Hunk downing his entire glass. Lance followed suit, and then promptly poured himself another. Maybe it was just an off-night. He glanced over at Keith who was sitting next to him, subconsciously seeking a comfort he didn’t understand himself.  
  
Keith just sat staring off into space. The spiral staircase was just that impressive.  
  
It actually was, and Keith wouldn't have been adverse to wandering up and away from the crowd when he got the chance. In the meantime he pretended to not hear anything anyone was saying. Lance’s flirting was normal, expected, and even merited. Keith might have been flaming gay but he could see that Allura was beautiful, and likeable, and talented, and engaging, and a whole lot of other things.  
  
 _Tangent,_ Keith thought, downing the rest of his glass.  
  
Basically, of course Lance flirted with her. Keith knew whatever he felt was unjustified so he strangled back every emotion and averted his gaze from the wall, focusing back on the group.  
  
Not comforted, Lance downed his glass as well. Allura sighed. “Lance, please don’t drink too much and vomit in my house like always. Please.”  
  
To prove a point, though it’s unclear which point, Lance poured and immediately chugged his whole other glass and then said, “Me, too drunk?”   
  
“Yes.”   
  
“Princess, are you afraid I’ll drink so much that I’ll become too charming for you to hand-”   
  
“Lance.” Shiro cut off him shortly, exasperation present in this voice as he came back from the kitchen and wiped his hands on a washcloth. He was too tired for these antics tonight. Lance pouted. “The punch is ready, so everyone but Pidge go and get some if you want.” Shiro announced to the whole room. The flow of foot traffic lead to the kitchen, a couple of more polite people mentioning thanks in return.   
  
Pidge leveled Shiro with an elusive look. Thinking ahead, no doubt. Shiro just looked back blankly, a challenge.  
  
“Punch,” Hunk announced, standing up and walking through towards the kitchen, “Can cook in your kitchen if I get drunk, Allura? I won’t make any messes, promise.”  
  
Allura considered this briefly. “You may.”  
  
As everybody mingled between living room and kitchen, Keith got up from the coffee table and discreetly exited. He climbed the spiral staircase and walked through the hall of the second floor to the balcony and opened and closed the massive glass paneled doors soundlessly.  
  
Keith just needed some air, as usual. He also needed to stop letting some insidious part of himself self read into the looks Lance gave him. And the things he said, and the way he held onto him from behind as they rode together on Keith’s motorcycle. Just stop it.  
  
Keith sat down at the patio table on the balcony and pulled a tightly rolled ziploc bag from inside his jacket. He rolled a sizable joint all while allowing himself to think of nothing, looking out at the black of night falling on the mansion’s garden. Beautiful.  
  
Keith lit the end and inhaled deeply. His friends were used to him slipping in and out of social contact so he figured he’d take his time leveling out. He exhaled the smoke into the air above him and watched it disappear. Palm resting on his chin, Keith stared at Allura’s garden.  
  
After about five minutes of silence, he faintly heard Shiro walking down the hall and towards the sliding glass door. Keith could tell by the way he walked that it was Shiro. He took another hit.  
  
The door slid open and closed quietly, “Having a good time?”  
  
“Yeah,” Keith answered easily, “Why?”  
  
“Just checking. You usually wander off for a reason.”  
  
Keith turned to face Shiro,  who was leaning against sliding door, arms crossed. Gentle, if not neutral expression. But still pretty pointed.  
  
“Nothing’s wrong.” Keith stared ahead again. “Getting some air.”  
  
Shiro looked as if he was considering saying something, but he didn’t. He sat down across from Keith in a way that managed to not be confrontational at all. Although Keith knew he was some degree of concerned. Shiro always kept it respectful.  
  
“I know neither of us has the kind of free time we used to, but you can still always talk to me.” The way Shiro said those semi-stock lines made them less ceremonious and more genuine. Keith had always appreciated that.  
  
“I know,” Keith managed a smile. “I’m good, really.”  
  
“I know you are.” Shiro answered, ambiguous. Then, out of nowhere, “Looks like you and Lance are getting along pretty well.”  
  
Keith fixed Shiro with a look and exhaled a cloud of smoke slowly. “Yeah, we are.” Keith tapped ash off the end of the joint. He added after some silence, “It’s good to not live alone.”  
  
Shiro laughed, a bit deprecating but somehow wistful, “It is.”  
  
Keith sighed and thought about the party downstairs. He thought about the years and years he’d lived by himself before moving in with Lance so recently. And how commonplace being alone had felt all that time.  
  
“Thanks for checking on me, Shiro.”  
  
Shiro smiled as he stood up. “I’m sure someone else would have done the same.” Keith was considering asking if that someone was metaphorical or literal but Shiro continued, “I’ll let you be.”  
  
He opened the patio door and then said over his shoulder, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, “I know you come out here to get away from everybody, but try not to run too hard from yourself, ok Keith? See you inside.” With another entirely genuine smile Shiro slid the door shut and disappeared into the darkness of the hall.  
  
Keith stared at the spot Shiro had occupied for a moment longer before standing up and going to lean over the balcony railing. He normally would have been offended at someone being so forward in their perception, assuming they were able to perceive anything. But Shiro was good.  
  
 _I’ll try not to, Shiro._ Keith took the longest drag off the joint yet, arms crossed over the railing. _I’ll try not to.  
  
_ Downstairs, Lance scurried his ass over to the punch and grabbed yet another drink, this one being his fourth. He could handle his liquor, but by the halfway mark of this cup, he was flat out tipsy. Hunk came over, glowing, his drunk blush already on his cheeks.   
  
“Hey Lance.” he said, putting a hand on his shoulder, smiling affably.   
  
“Hey Hunk.” Lance put his hand on Hunk’s shoulder, grinning back.  
  
“Hey Lance and Hunk.” Pidge said from below the two of them, sipping on punch.   
  
“Wha- how did you get that? You should not be doing that. Where’s Shiro? Shiro!” Hunk hollered, but both Allura and Shiro had mysteriously vanished yet again. He ripped his arm away from Lance to swivel around and look for them.   
  
“Probably making out.” Pidge smirked.  
  
“You hush!” Hunk chided.   
  
“Anyway,” Pidge took a deep sip, “what game are we gonna play tonight?” Pidge always managed to carry this good-natured yet mildly devious and bored energy at parties.  
  
“Uh, well. Hmmm.” Hunk thought for a while.   
  
“Truth or dare,” Lance quipped. “Obviously.”  
  
“Wooooah, truth or dare!” Hunk sung, nodding his head to each word. It was a party classic because it could turn in whatever direction was most interesting for the person and the time.   
  
Shiro came down the stairs slowly, cracking his neck and stretching. “Truth or dare, huh?” was his introduction to their conversation, a hint of reservation towards the game coupled with a resignation at the inevitability of playing it. As he walked over he breezily swooped the glass out of Pidge’s little fingers and took it for himself.  
  
“Hey!” Pidge growled, unjustifiably offended. Shiro only leveled a glance and took a sip, and Pidge grumbled unhappily.   
  
“What are the rules gonna be?” He continued, as if he didn’t notice. The flow of people came in and out, a small circle now having formed around the core group.   
  
Lance cracked his knuckles; he’d been planning out this beaut of a game forever.   
  
“Truth or dare, but if you don’t answer your question or do your dare, you have to take off an article of clothing.” he presented it like it was pure genius. It earned him some impressed head nods from strangers and general murmurings of approval, which Lance hastily accepted into his mental validation pouch.   
  
“Strip truth or dare?” Shiro looked slightly pained.    
  
“Oh, and if you don’t wanna strip either, take a shot. Sorry, forgot to add.” Lance responded. A slight tension was immediately relieved.   
  
Shiro sighed, but the rest of them, all inebriated a good bit at this point, agreed to these rules.  
  
Allura came in from the double doors, expensive but casual looking maxi dress fluttering behind her. “I was just on the phone with Coran -- he sends his warmest regards, and also wanted me to tell everyone not to dirty the house while he’s away on his trip, or set anything on fire.” She wanted to give a pointed look at Keith for that one -- he had a history with lighters -- but couldn’t see him.   
  
“Where’s Keith?” she asked bluntly.   
  
Lance’s face scrunched up. _Where IS Keith?_  The room all kind of unanimously shrugged, but Pidge -- still sour from having the drink taken -- said shortly “I saw him go upstairs.” Lance vaguely remembered seeing that too, and remembered it being after he had failed at flirting with Allura, and he felt strange -- some sort of lacking, an anxious emptiness, or yearning, or something. It bothered him that Keith wasn’t there. It bothered him that Keith hadn’t been there and he hadn’t known.   
  
He filled his glass, and then grabbed another and filled that too, and said as smoothly as he could to cover these feelings, “No probs, Bobs, I’ll go get ‘im.”   
  
He ascended the staircase as carefully as he could on wobbly legs, trying his best not to spill the drinks, and then searched. He saw Keith’s silhouette from behind leaning on the railing of the balcony, wind running through his hair, a bright red light from the end of his joint contrasting starkly against the muted twilight landscape. The music and conversations from downstairs were muffled, reduced to a quiet rhythmic humming. Alone, free to stare, and drunk enough to let himself, he simply watched Keith from through the sliding glass door about 15 feet away. He looked smoldering. Magical. Lance couldn’t remember ever looking at someone with such wonder, no “nice ass” or “cute face,” instead appreciating him as if he were appraising art. He swallowed dryly and shook his head, trying to shoo away the fluttering about his stomach.    
  
He padded over to the door quietly, so as not to bother Keith, and then rapped gently on the glass with a knuckle still wrapped around the glass, motioning with his head for Keith to open the door for him since his hands were full.   
  
Keith looked over his shoulder and was surprised. Why did Lance care where he wandered off to? Keith thought he’d be halfway past drunk and having the time of his life flirting downstairs.   
  
Keith turned around and took the joint from his mouth in one hand, stepping forward to open the door. He exhaled the smoke as he said, “What’re you doing up here?”    
  
“Giving you this drink.” Lance answered, handing it over. He slid the door closed and approached the railing, turning around to face Keith while he leaned back on it. The wind felt nice on his warm skin. “What are _you_ doing up here?”

Keith held up the joint, which was almost out at this point. He couldn’t stop staring at Lance as he took a final drag and then, impulsively, put it out against the palm of his gloved hand. He tucked the roach in his jacket pocket and then drank some of the punch Lance had handed to him.   
  
“I was smoking.”  
  
“I’m serious -- are you okay, man?” Lance maintained, looking him up and down with a small smile. It was getting a bit chilly for his light cotton tee and he wrapped his free arm around his stomach. He sought out burning eye contact with Keith, his gaze unfalteringly earnest, overwhelmingly so.   
  
“Yeah,” Keith answered, a bit bewildered. He didn’t know why Lance was asking. Well, Keith knew he was generally not ok but it had never gone beyond that. Why was Lance smiling at him like that?  
  
“Yeah I’m really ok.” He sipped his punch absently, his gaze piercing. Lance was shivering and Keith considered for one millionth of a second to offer him his jacket.  
  
Lance was drunk. He was always too forward, and too talkative, but now it came to full fruition in front of Keith. Or rather, directed at Keith -- Keith who he _knew_ now, or at least knew better now, who he hung out with everyday, who he’d hang out with every moment if he were allowed to --   
  
He just went for it. “Look, I know this is what you do. It’s your thing. You’re suffering, you’ve been suffering for as long as I’ve known you, but you make it out to be something casual and far away so that people can’t actually feel ok asking you about it, and then when people get close and ask anyway, you brush it off, and you distance it some more, because that’s your thing-- maybe it’s the only thing you know how to do, or maybe it’s more comfortable, or less effort, or less painful if things go wrong.” his tone wasn’t aggressive or even frustrated -- it was gentle and understanding, softer than he’d ever been in front of Keith.   
  
“And I get it. Or, at least I understand why it would be useful to do that. It’s not how I work, but it makes sense, and you’re not wrong for doing it, but it’s keeping you alone. And I want you to know you don’t have to be alone like that anymore if you don’t want to be -- I know we’ve had this dumbass rivalry thing going on for however long now, but you’re a really important person to me, Keith. I mean it. You can trust me. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, but I want you to know I am here to listen.” he was rambling and he knew it, and he also knew Keith probably would find a way to brush this off too somehow, but he was ok with that.  
  
Keith felt his throat constrict. He thought he felt something like his heart breaking too. He wasn’t cut out for this. He didn’t know how to handle vulnerability. And he didn’t know how to not be alone.  
  
His body was breaking down underneath his skin, his head was pulsing with electricity, he felt like he was seeing things in five dimensions and the weed had nothing to do with it. And he couldn’t begin to talk to Lance about any of it, even after Lance himself had asked.  
  
Coward.  
  
Keith was nauseous, taken aback to feel tears prickling behind his eyes. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried, but his dry eyes blinked them back easily.  
  
“Even though I’m a walking hot topic advertisement?” Keith’s face was stony but he tried to keep it light.  
  
Lance barked out laughter, not at all expecting a joke to be cracked. It quieted into a warm and sleepy smile. “Did you know I shopped exclusively at Hot Topic in seventh grade? I begged for like 3 years to be allowed to but my mom called it gringo nonsense. Eventually she caved but refused to go in so she made my brother take me, but by then it was already out of style.” There was a tender and reflective pause,  then he admitted, “You know, you don’t _actually_ look like you shop at Hot Topic.”   
  
He averted his gaze, sheepishly looking up, arms still crossed over his chest. “Everyone knows you’re stylish, Keith. You’re a very refined, aged emo, like a rich fine wine.”   
  
“I’m _stylish_?” Keith couldn’t help himself. He never thought in forever that he would be hearing these things coming out of Lance’s mouth.  
  
“Yes, you’re stylish.” he said as if he were confessing something embarrassing. “You had to know that right? You got the whole ‘small, dark, handsome’ thing going on.” He took another sip, realizing he’d called Keith handsome but drunkenness allowing himself to not worry about it under the premise it was all very casual.  
  
Keith looked down at his nondescript black t shirt and jeans. He guessed his leather jacket did something, and the gloves. But they were for his bike.  
  
He could tell that Lance was getting more and more sheepish by the second with all the talk about Keith’s appearance. Keith was flattered, regardless of the fact that Lance’s nerve was obviously becoming compromised by the threat of the gay sphere. Keith wanted to assure Lance that he knew he wasn’t letting on actual interest, let alone being hit on. But drawing attention to that idea might make Lance more uncomfortable.

Keith finally met Lance’s eyes again and said, “Thanks.” Then, simply because he wasn’t impolite, he added, “You look pretty good yourself, Lance.” Half smile.  
  
Lance’s eyebrows raised, a cheeky and satisfied little smile growing on his face. He shamelessly reacted to the compliment, not at all hiding how pleased he was to receive one.  He put his hand over his heart. “Only pretty good?” he obviously tried to milk it out.   
  
Keith was running out of excuses. Granted, he had many, and they were all quite valid. Hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten, smoked at joint (although his tolerance kind of invalidated that one), and was at least a little past tipsy (although he hid it well). And there was the matter of wanting to do what he did. That was an excuse, he supposed. Whatever. Keith finished his glass while he thought all of this over.  
  
He let the cards fall where they may. “Lance,” _Don’t burn holes into his eyes Keith,_ “I think you look really good, all the time.”  
  
The intensity of the comment took Lance by surprise. A gust of wind passed by as his breath got stuck in his chest. He shivered and wasn’t sure if it was entirely because of the cold. Time seemed to slow, or melt. Still faintly smiling, Lance’s eyes filled with unspoken questions. He wanted that comment to mean something. He wanted to be closer, the couple feet between them feeling vast. He bit his lip.  
  
 _Fuck.  
  
_ Lance really liked him. Really, really liked him.  
  
 _Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck  
  
_ He opened his mouth like he was going to say something but realized he didn’t have the words quite yet. He wondered if the spark and gravitational pull he felt was mutual.  
  
Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly with the liquor accounted for, he wasn’t panicked by what had dawned on him-- he felt alive and bright and wonderful. A big smile overcame him, one that crinkled his eyes and displayed his dimples. “Thanks, Keith.”  
  
Electricity fizzled over Keith’s skin. He stared at Lance, _hard._ He felt elevated, unable to control his usual physical filters. He knew his eyes were crackling and doing that thing that unnerved people. He stared and stared at Lance, deciphering body language, expression, affectation of voice.  
  
Eyes.    
  
Keith might have been wrong. But he usually wasn’t. And Lance was the one comparing him to fine wine.  
  
So he went for it.  
  
“Yeah,” He tilted his head, and continued in a damnably unaffected voice because hey, he was an asshole after all, “Good enough to eat.”  
  
The comment lit a fire in Lance, a confirmation, an invitation. His smile faded and a nearly uncontrollable hunger replaced it. He took a step forward-  
  
“What’s up guys.”  
  
Keith’s eyes shifted fiercely to Pidge, who was standing in the doorway. He’d watched the sliding door open right as Lance was. What? About to _what?  
  
_ And now he wouldn’t know. Keith had the satisfaction of seeing Pidge’s shifty smile recoil, albeit marginally, when he glared. Lance jerked his head over his shoulder, and Pidge looked conspicuously oblivious.  
  
Keith also registered what was probably a high degree of frustration. Ah, Shiro.  
  
“Still can’t get your hands on any liquor?” Keith pushed off from the balcony railing and offered Lance a side-eyed glance. He hoped he conveyed a lot with that look.  
  
 _This is your out, my friend. You can pretend it didn’t happen in the morning._ Still, Keith smiled warmly at Lance as he stepped towards the door. Let the cards fall where they may.  
  
“No.” Pidge answered, shortly. “So I’d like to start the game,” A pause, “Unless either one of you would like to offer,” A gesture to their glasses, “Or Keith wants to be generous with the joint I know he has on him-  
  
“You say it like I’m trying to keep it a secret.” Keith instinctively placed his hand against Lance’s shoulder as the three of them stepped back inside. The guy seemed quite frazzled. He pulled it back casually after about two seconds.  
  
Keith added, “And I’m not in the mood for a Shiro lecture.”  
  
“Ugh I don’t understand him. It’s illegal for you too!” Pidge began, quite charged.  
  
Keith just laughed. “Talk to him about it.”


	6. Truth or Dare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the late post!! school and whatnot! this chapter is wild but romantic??

“Truth...or dare!” Hunk said, his finger’s point roaming across everyone in the circle until it landed on -- “Keith!”  The game had been going on for a while now, but everyone still had their clothes on.

“Truth.” Keith answered.

Hunk rubbed his hands together and thought, his cognitive processes slowed and ludicrous in his drunken haze, before he gave a devious smile and looked Keith straight in the eyes.

“Ok Keith. Truth: are you a furry?” A couple people laughed at his question, but he stared Keith down.

Keith blinked, face blank. “Not quite.”

“WHAT?” Lance shouted from next to Keith, beginning to laugh. He’d gotten considerably more drunk since the scene at the balcony, if anything just to loosen up from that Pidge-interruption-tension, and that meant he got considerably louder. “Keith, what the hell is that even supposed to mean -”

“Yeah,” Hunk agreed, also laughing, “What is ‘not quite’ a furry? Are you or aren’t you one?”

“I think we have our answer.” Pidge said sagely.

Keith nodded at Pidge. “That’s that. So-”  
  
“No way! That counts as a non-answer.” Lance said, side-eyeing Keith.  
  
Allura nodded. “Unfortunately, I agree with Lance. You have got to say more or face the game’s penalty.” she carefully avoided saying “strip.”

Keith thought. He didn’t really care to get into furry discourse. Let alone about himself. But then again if he stripped instead of answering Lance would definitely call him a furry. Keith sighed, but he found the situation hilarious.

“Yes.” Keith said.

Keith’s face and tone still managed to elude the question, and no one could really decipher whether he was joking or not. Lance’s jaw dropped and he turned to Keith.   
  
“Well, he answered.” Pidge said. Hunk shrugged, not able to deny that truth.  
  
“Truth or dare, Lance.” Keith ignored the look of surprise on his face.  
  
As they met eyes, a jolt went between them, like an echo from their time alone earlier. Lance didn’t know which one he wanted to choose more, something interesting possibly lying with either option. 

  
“Dare.” he said unflinchingly, deciding to be more fun, bold, and spontaneous.

“I dare you to do this,” Keith held held his hands up by his head, fists curled in like a cat, “And moan ‘nya’ like you’re having an orgasm” Keith looked at Lance steadily before dropping his hands back down to his lap.

Lance stared unmoving for just a second before his eyes closed and he stayed very still, as if he could just stare at the back of his eyelids and the situation would vanish. He listened acutely to the “OHHHH”s that went around the room, as well as Hunk’s nervous “Dear God…”  
  
He thought about how willing Keith was to socially crash and burn if it meant taking Lance down with him. Or was Keith even crashing? Somehow, it still wasn’t clear whether he was genuinely a furry.

He felt his will wavering. _No._ He couldn’t chicken out. He was Lance McClain, damn it all, and he never backed down. He steadied himself with the conviction to make Keith jizz later when he thought about it alone in his room, as payback of course.  
  
He took in a deep breath and opened his eyes again, giving Keith a straight face. He slowly raised his hands as paws. Someone in the circle he didn’t recognize said “oh my god” quietly.  The energy crackled between them as it became clear he would deliver his performance directly to Keith.  
  
It should be noted, Lance is a good actor.

He tensed his body while he arched his back and fluttered his eyes closed again, then tilted his head up slightly as his mouth parted, displaying his slender neck. Breathy stuttery gasps built up to a throaty “nyaaa” whine, like the noise was violent, ripping through him.  He even played out the part that came after -- deep erratic panting, brows upturned, licking at his lips. While theatrical, it sounded realistic, and he knew, because he’d made those sounds himself before. Not the nya part, but the tone of it. 

All at once, he flashed his eyes back on Keith, dropping the face and letting his hands fall behind him. There was a long silence, everyone just kind of staring at Lance while he stared at Keith.

Keith felt like he was about to pounce. He should have known Lance would lay it on thick, but he wasn’t quite ready to see it with his own two eyes. He would never, ever forget that image.     

“Jesus, Lance.” Shiro finally said, as if he’d been insulted. Lance just shrugged. He was too resolved with his desire to affect Keith for it to bother him at all.

Keith felt like his skin was on fire. He wanted to finish what Lance looked like he was about to start earlier on the balcony.

But he couldn’t. So he said, “It’s your turn, Lance.” And then Keith gave Lance a deliberate once over and added, “Unless you want me to tell you you’re a good boy.”  
  
“OH MY GOD, KEITH.” Hunk sputtered.  
  
Lance squinted his eyes and raised his brows, his lips pulling into a tight line -- a face that communicated “really?” He cocked his head to the side.  
  
“Ok, you know what? Keith, truth or dare.” Lance challenged. The room shifted as they realized this game was quickly becoming another public spat between the two.

Keith thought. He could admit his judgment was becoming unhinged. Either one would undoubtedly be extreme. Though he’d rather not talk about himself, if he could avoid it.

“Dare,” Keith said. 

Lance realized he didn’t actually have a dare planned. Then, it struck, a devious delightment growing in him. He placed his hands under his chin as if he were posing for a school picture.  
  
“I dare you to do the dishes for three months.” he said. 

“Lance,” Pidge said with a straight face, “That’s kind of shitty.”

“Whatever.” Keith pulled his shirt over his head. He eyed his gloves and then yanked those off too. “Happy?”

Lance tutted. “Sell out.” 

Keith wanted to dare him to not talk for three months but instead he fixed his eyes on Pidge and ignored Lance, knowing that would have more of an effect. He also wanted to see if Lance was checking him out, but he’d get back to that.

“Truth or dare.”

“Dare,” Pidge answered.

Keith didn’t hesitate. “Let me look at your laptop.”

“No,” Pidge answered immediately, pulling off a single sock. No one commented on starting with socks because it was Pidge. “Lance, truth or dare.”

“What?! Me again?” he cried in disbelief. He gave a high-school “ugh” and rolled his eyes before conceding. “Fine, uhhhh... Truth. I’m doing a sampler.”  

Pidge typically avoided getting involved in the Lance and Keith variety hour, but was feeling irritable and bored.

“Is there someone in this room you jerk it to? Just a yes or no.” Granted, there were a good number of people, so Lance could be relatively safe in his answer.

Once again, Lance’s jaw dropped. He surveyed the room for an out but found none; of his friends, Allura looked displeased, Shiro was straightfaced but blushing, Hunk was pointedly fiddling with his thumbs, and Keith was staring at him blankly.  
  
Lance was having a hard time playing this one off as coolly. He tried to ignore the flashing memories of all the times in high school alone that his teenage hormones took him for a ride just from noticing something innocuous -- like Keith’s shiny black hair, or whatever. He wanted to be able to blame it all on teenage hormones, but vivid images he’d pictured in more recent times flooded him as well.  
  
He knew there was no way he could lie about this -- he was already giving it away by blushing. He didn’t want to admit this though, and didn’t think he could pull off some snarky comment either.  
  
He removed his shirt and kept silent.

Pidge smirked. “Your turn again.”

He needed to get his mind off Keith pronto.  “Allura, truth or dare?” 

“Truth.” she chose quickly.  
  
“Have you ever been dumped?” he asked devilishly, trying mostly just to bother her as a diversion.

Allura honestly looked offended that she’d been asked anything at all. “For your information, no.” Before Lance could prompt her, she continued, “Truth or dare.”

 _Fuck._ His plan having backfired entirely, Lance was thrown back in again.  
  
“Dare, but please be gentle with me.” he said only slightly pleadingly.

Allura smiled. “I dare you to tell us the name of the person in this room that you, ugh,” Allura shook her head, “What pidge said earlier. Give me a name”

Lance was beginning to break out in a cold sweat.

“Come on now, Allura, you can’t really mea-” he began desperately, but looked at her to see an unmoving expression.  If he had a shirt collar he’d be tugging at it nervously. He heard snickering about the room.

Telling the truth was not an option, and he was a little bitter that his dare was really a truth. Shaking his head, he shimmied out of his pants as well, sheepishly revealing that he was wearing pink bikini cut undies.  
  
“For the record, I’m not ashamed.” he said. Down to underwear and socks only, he pursed his lips and made defiant eye contact with everyone in the room, challenging them to say something. He tried to discretely gauge Keith’s reaction to his semi-nudity.

Who was unabashedly staring. In the morning Lance would pretend nothing had happened between them anyways, so why pass up the opportunity?  

“Why would you need to be ashamed?” Allura asked clinically. Perhaps it was a disguised compliment to make up for how brutally the game was treating Lance. She continued, “Your turn.”  

Lance was drunk enough that he didn’t have the self control to pry his gaze away from Keith and look at Allura as she spoke, too busy studying Keith studying him. All he said in response was,

“Keith, truth or dare?”

“Dare.”

“Since you’re so high and mighty, I dare _you_ to tell us if _you’ve_ ever jerked it to someone in this room.” he said, feigning antagonism.

“Yeah, I have.” Keith answered, arms crossed. “Truth or dare, Lance.”

Lance was furious at how breezily he passed that question after he had stumbled through it, and also so interested in who it might have been that it bothered him beyond compare. He jerked his head forward to irrationally glare at Keith.  
  
“Dare!”

“I dare you to catch Pidge and then dive into the pool. ”  
  
Lance looked puzzled for a second before just shrugging and lunging for Pidge, who had already began scurrying away while yelling angry expletives.  
  
“Don’t you do this, Lance!” Pidge screamed while hopping over the back of the nearby couch. Lance barreled onward but his socks kept slipping on the expensive and freshly waxed floor, and he clumsily slid over to clutch onto Pidge’s hoodie, losing his own balance in the process. Pidge flailed until a coffee table was bumped into.  
  
A nice looking vase went crashing down, shattering into many glittering pieces on the floor. A milisecond of silence.  
  
“Oh, honestly!” Allura fumed, standing now, genuinely upset. “This is just unacceptable.” Everyone froze, realizing it was wrath time.    
  
“How old are you guys? Lance? _Keith_? What has gotten into you two? That was a family antique passed down for many generations.” she lectured, only getting more angry.  
  
Shiro cleared his throat and stood as well, feeling responsible for their mayhem.  
  
“Lance and Keith, why don’t you take a breather on the patio for a bit.” he said, more of a gentle command than a question.  
  
Lance deflated, hunching his shoulders. “But-” he started, but Shiro raised that authoritative eyebrow and Lance couldn’t ignore the stress written all over him and begin to feel a bit guilty.  He let go of Pidge who harrumphed and pretended to dust off imaginary Lance-particles from the hoodie.  
  
Lance slunk over to the circle and balled up his discarded clothes that were laying on the ground and then pouted all the way to the patio door.

Keith didn’t understand why he needed to be punished for simply playing the game. He hadn’t broken anything.

Shiro’s ruthless fairness.

But he went quietly, following Lance and grabbing his drink. He was amused and he couldn’t show it because Allura would have his head.

_________________________________

 

They were standing outside now and Lance was more cold than he’d been the entire night, what with his partial nudity at all. He shivered where he stood under the pale moonlight, giving sullen puppy dog eyes to Keith.  
  
“Why’d you have to go and get us booted from the party, Keith?” His teeth chattered and he gingerly tried to get his pants up his chicken legs.

“I didn’t. I just gave you a dare like I was supposed to.” Keith avoided eye contact. He’d left his shirt in the living room like a tool. And he wanted to stare at Lance, but wouldn’t.  
  
Lance didn’t have the same concerns, eyeing Keith’s abs plainly and looking back up at him after he’d gotten his pants above his hips.  
  
“Aren’t you cold?”

“No.” He wasn’t, either. The alcohol had given him that. He finally looked at Lance. “Sorry about the vase.”

Lance already had his mouth open to smart off more about the vase before he realized that Keith had already apologized. He looked confused. “ _You’re_ sorry?” He shoved his hands in his pocket.  
  
“Uh, yeah. I knew it was going to end badly.”  
  
“It’s -- well, it didn’t necessarily end badly anyway. At least I got out of there before everyone had me booty ass naked.” He yanked his thin shirt on.

“Yeah, at least there’s that,” Keith didn’t mask the sarcasm, knowing it would probably go over Lance’s head anyway. He was also feeling more ridiculous with every passing minute over his missing shirt. But whatever.

He took the rest of his joint out of his pocket (lucky that he’d taken it out of his jacket earlier) and lit the end. After exhaling he nodded towards the rows of flowers nearby. “You want to walk until we’re allowed back in?”  
  
Still buzzed, Lance found his eyes wandering again over Keith’s middle (muscled, firm, smooth, dark but sparse hair trailing down his belly button) and at first didn’t even recognize that Keith had asked a question.  
  
“...Dude, have you always had a six pack? Why are you so muscley? When did that happen?”  He finally made eye contact again. “And, uh, yeah! That sounds great actually.” The garden was exceptionally large, beautiful, and perfectly manicured.

Keith fixed Lance with a searching look while they walked down the path. He finally offered, as plainly as he could. “I’ve always worked out.”

“Um, are you telling me little baby Keith was pumping iron? That’d be messed up. Babies are supposed to be chubby little poo monsters.” he plucked a leaf off of a low hanging tree branch as they passed it.

“Not as a baby.” Keith frowned at Lance’s visuals. “Probably since I was seven or eight. And back then it was just sports in elementary school.”

“Awww, you played sports? You don’t really seem like the team-player sort,” he teased good-naturedly, “I happened to be a little league superstar myself.”

“I’m not. That’s why I quit. Well, that and-” Keith faltered. Then pretended he hadn’t added anything. He took a long drag off of the joint.“I bet you had fun in baseball.”

“That and what?” Lance asked, not letting it be dropped. He could feel his ears figuratively perk up with curiosity and his gut drop at an instinct telling him that the answer was going to be fucked up.

Keith waited a long time before he said anything. He couldn’t help it. He could hardly believe he was saying anything at all.

“I started working a lot so I could live on my own. I didn’t have the free time. And I was...a lot worse in high school.”

There were a lot of questions Lance wanted to ask but he knew he had to take it one at a time at the very least to keep Keith even this rare amount of open.    
  
“Wow, I… I didn’t know.” Lance admitted, recalling how much of a little ass he’d been to Keith back then-- not malicious, but annoying and removed. “How old were you when you moved out?”

“Sixteen.” Keith looked straight ahead. “They normally don’t let you leave that early but I worked it out.”

Lance felt like he was missing something. “Who’s they?”

“The state.” Keith looked at Lance and realized that wasn’t enough. “I lived in a boarding house.”

Lance didn’t know what to say. How could he have known Keith for so many years and not have known he had no family to call his own? He wanted to hold Keith’s hand. He wanted to take Keith in to his large network of family, have his mom pinch Keith’s cheeks and his little sisters tug at Keith’s sleeves.

What could have been appropriate to say? There was nothing that didn’t feel insensitive or clunky.

“Was this your first time living with someone since moving out?” he settled for.

Keith smiled wryly. “Hope I’m not doing a bad job.”

“I’m honored.” Lance replied, meaning it to seem both casual and genuine. “You’re actually the best roommate I’ve ever had, and I’ve had many. Don’t tell Hunk I said that though.”

“So are you. Hands down.” They turned a corner and Keith avoided looking at Lance against the backdrop of red and pink flowers.

Lance chuckled and said, “Dare me to steal some good looking plants?” as he already began to snag one of the flowers. Another breeze went by, taking pale petals with it. He shivered again.

Keith let himself stare while Lance’s attention was diverted. 

“Hey, when do you want to head home? You’re probably dead ass tired right now, right?” Lance asked with remembered concern.

Keith took one last hit before the joint went out. “Not that much more than usual. We can stay however late you want.”

“While you may be pulling off the whole half-naked bad-boy thing, the bags under your eyes are clearly not from your stylist.” Lance said. “Besides, I think my nipples have frozen off and I want to go home to tend to them.”

What Lance didn’t say is that he’d prefer Keith’s company over anyone else’s these days and he looked forward to going home with him.

“I’m not a _bad boy_ ,” Keith made air quotes, “But you’re right. Give me about an hour to sober up and I’ll take us home.

 

_________________________________

 

Keith lay awake in bed. It was almost three and he should have taken a sleeping pill or something of the like hours ago but he couldn’t. They got back relatively early, around one. But Keith had a lot to think about.

His mind wandered back, again and again, to when Lance was with him on the balcony. Keith couldn’t really believe it now, completely sober. He couldn’t stop thinking of what Lance would have done had they not been interrupted.

Keith knew that likely nothing would be said come morning. That was expected and even understandable. Lance let himself get carried away. But at least Keith knew now that drunk Lance found him attractive enough.

And liked him enough as well. Keith thought of their talk while they were kicked outside of the party. How Lance had listened to him and Keith had spoken so easily. He hated opening up. He even hated it that night. Now Lance knew four percent more of his baggage. But he’d wanted to tell him, so badly. And he wanted Lance to ask.

Keith knew he needed to sleep. The longer he thought of Lance the more he’d end up reading into all of it and forgetting who he was dealing with. Lance flirted with everyone. At least Keith thought.

Not like that though. Not like faking an orgasm in truth or dare specifically for him. Or looking shy when Keith gave him his jacket because the ride back was chilly.

Keith got up from his bed quickly. He couldn’t think like that.

He knew his body, or mind really, couldn’t afford any more strain. So he didn’t go running like he normally would. He thought about Lance’s pink underwear and immediately dismissed the idea of jerking off. That would be pathetic.

Keith sighed and resigned to smoking. It was somewhat of a special occasion, so he cut open a blunt and began rolling it. When he was finished he dragged the desk chair over to his keyboard, turned the volume down, and started playing quietly as he smoked.

Even if nothing ever came up again, Keith was starting to understand what it meant to have an actual living, breathing, friend.

__________________________________

 

Lance woke up the next morning in a foggy daze with a pounding headache.

“Ay dios mio,” he groaned, bringing his hand up to cover his unshielded eyes -- where was his eye mask anyway? And why was he… wearing… Keith’s jacket?

He shot up and inspected the sleeves of what was definitely Keith’s jacket, then down to his feet, where he had one shoe still on.  
  
“What the flippin’ fuck…” he grumbled, rubbing his eyes.

The night before came flooding into his mind, past the dull pain -- images of zipping through the city on Keith’s bike, basking in his _feelings_ for Keith on the balcony, stepping forward to… to do whatever he was going to do, stripping down and obliging in some regrettable dares for Keith,  strolling through the moonlit garden with Keith, and then getting even more plastered right before they left because he couldn’t allow himself to pass up such good free alcohol. He remembered the warmth in his arms as Keith took them both home and then… 

Well, I guess he was here.  
  
He carefully removed the jacket and appreciated the token, hoping it must have meant a lot that he got to wear it. Before he could stop himself, he brought it up to his nose and inhaled Keith’s scent -- warm and familiar and intimate. He began to giggle thinking about how nice it was that he had this, had Keith in his life.

  
Then he got weirded out by himself acting like a silly teen, fawning over a simple gesture.    
  
Lance was in over his head. He was getting himself worked up over nothing, again, like he always did. Keith hadn’t actually shown any firm interest in anything other than a more healthy friendship. If Lance were to be looking for real evidence, he couldn’t list anything to back up his wants. Of course that hadn’t stopped Lance from reading into every scrap of positive attention he ever got. He was mad at himself for letting this happen. Keith wasn’t interested in anybody like that, he was sure of it -- probably somewhere in the a-spectrum -- and he didn’t want to be the asshole to ruin the friendship jenga game that had taken, what, 6 years to build up? With confessing one-sided gay feelings? No way. Lance wasn’t stable enough to handle that.  
  
He had no idea what to do, and at the same time couldn’t afford troubleshooting much attention with his ungodly hangover. He groaned and curled into fetal position, rubbing his incredibly chapped lips together and whimpering at how disgustingly unmoisturized they were.  
  
Then, he was rushing to the toilet, falling to his knees, and barfing uncontrollably.


	7. I'm Here to Save Your Life

 Keith heard Lance throwing up in the bathroom as he was starting coffee. For a minute he just stood in the kitchen, listening. That was a bad habit of his.  
  
Then he opened the pantry and took out some ibuprofen, three based on the expected severity of Lance’s headache. He poured a glass of water and headed to the bathroom. Lance was still on the floor hanging over the toilet, lifeless save for a little wobbling side to side.  
  
“Here,” Keith spoke from the doorway, politely refraining from barging in. He held out the pills and water. “Try to drink it all if you can.”  
  
Lance turned his head slowly, forcing himself to pry open his eyes just a crack despite the incredibly sensitivity to light he was experiencing. A bleary view of Keith’s frame at the doorway made him whimper. He tried to weakly reach a hand out to grab it but it was too far, and he was too wobbly, and the arm quickly fell back down.  
  
“Keeeith,” he sobbed.  
  
Keith stared at Lance and fought off a smile. Then he walked over, crouched down, and physically placed the water glass in Lance’s hand. Taking advantage of the groaning Lance was doing, Keith flicked the three pain killers into his open mouth.  
  
Keith smirked. “I’m here to save your life.”  
  
Lance wanted to say thank you, but he gulped down water and swallowed the pills instead, head lolling afterwards. He felt like shit. He probably looked like shit too.  
  
“I can’t be saved…” he said dramatically, voice hoarse and sickly. He held his head in his hands and lost the little balance he had, leaning into Keith’s side as result.  
  
Keith stiffened but then allowed himself to relax at the contact. He took the water glass from Lance’s hand and looked down at him. He obviously had crashed as soon as they got back last night, hadn’t showered, and was wearing tiny blue boxers and a grey t-shirt. He looked wrecked because he was hungover, but it just made Keith want to do unspeakable things to him all the more.  
  
“You’re fine,” Keith said, setting the glass aside and taking Lance’s shoulders in his hands to look at his face. “Can you eat?”  
  
Lance nodded morosely, cracking his eyes open just enough to read his expression.  
  
“You smell good.” Lance whined, delivering the compliment like he were listing a symptom.  
  
Keith, damn it all to hell, actually felt something like a blush spread across his face. He wanted to ask Lance what “good” smelled like to him. Keith quickly erased whatever unguarded look he had and hoisted Lance up. At first he pulled Lance’s arm around his shoulder and put one of his own around Lance’s waist in the typical pose. But Lance was inconveniently not designating any energy to balance, whatsoever.  
  
So, Keith sighed and said, “Thanks,” And then scooped Lance into his arms decisively.  
  
Yes, bridal style.  
  
Keith looked down at Lance’s face in his arms. “I’m taking you to the kitchen.”    
  
Lance blinked slowly, not entirely registering what had just happened.   
  
“Keith, this is…” _What? This is what?_ “How are you so strong?!”  
  
“I bench 200.” _And you brought up my muscles last night and I’m starting to think you like them._ Keith side eyed Lance in his arms as he walked to the kitchen. “You were being dramatic. This is faster.”    
  
“ **Dramatic**???” Lance was aghast, kicking his leg up into the air and tossing his head to the side from Keith’s arms. He only turned back to look up at Keith and say matter-of-factly, “I’m dying, asshole.”  
  
Keith jerked his arms, making Lance think he was going to let go. Lance grappled on with a vice grip, letting out a small shriek of terror and then grumbling at how easily he’d been scared.   
  
He was feeling nauseous again from all the commotion and Keith’s body heat and firm-soft form was becoming too enticing to ignore. He groaned and leaned further into his chest.   
  
“I don’t feel so good.”  
  
Keith felt Lance’s nose almost brush his nipple through his shirt and quickly realized Lance felt entirely too good in his arms.  
  
"I know,” He set Lance down in a dining chair and then returned with a refilled water glass. “Drink this while I cook. Keep the whining to a minimum.”  
  
Lance snorted at that, not having enough strength to let that become a point to bicker about. He deflated onto the top of the table and closed his eyes again because the light streaming in from the kitchen window was too bright. 

There was a moment of silence, and then Lance mumbled a very soft, hardly enunciated “Thanks” into his shirt sleeve, as if he were trying to keep Keith from actually hearing.  
  
Keith looked over his shoulder after pulling on an apron and setting a pan on the oven. “What was that?”  
  
Lance paused, getting more flustered but pressing on.  
  
“I said thanks,” he said it, still into his arm but just a little louder.  
  
“Oh,” Keith wondered what the big deal was, “You have any requests?” He turned the heat up on the burner and then looked inside the fridge.  
  
Lance gulped. This was…. Extremely romantic. Why was Keith being so nice to him? It was overwhelmingly nice -- a sort of kindness that was seldom shown to Lance.  Impulsive as always, he couldn’t help but blurt out his thoughts.  
  
“Why are you being so nice to me?”  
  
“I..” Why was he? He hadn’t even questioned it. It seemed entirely natural for him to be doing this. Even though he could recognize that it was pretty out of character. Keith took the milk out of the fridge and then got what he needed from the pantry.  
  
“I’d like to. If you let me.” He began mixing batter in a bowl. “I’m not as big of a jerk as you think I am, promise.”  
  
“I don’t think you’re a jerk.” Lance interjected with concern in his voice, craning his head around to look at Keith. “I just don’t know why you’d want to be nice to me. I --” he was getting into tricky territory. _I have a hefty load of existential self loathing, trauma I poorly cope with, and an extreme need for constant validation, support, and affection, but I rarely get these needs met and feel like I don’t deserve to have them met anyway, so I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around why someone so good at everything would be wasting his time with someone who has so little to offer -- I mean, I’m kind of the walking definition of a wreck, just with a bombacious fun filter over top. I’m the partying ghost emoji._  
  
“Whatcha making?”  
  
Keith didn’t turn around to see Lance but he could hear very plainly that there was a lot unsaid. But Lance had changed the topic, so he would go with it.  
  
“Pancakes. Eggs if you want them.” Keith poured the batter. He realized he didn’t want to leave Lance’s comment hanging in the air.

“I want to be nice to you because you’re a nice person. And I’m glad you’re my” Keith almost faltered with dissatisfaction and peculiar bitterness at the word, but didn’t, “friend.” He paused. “If you want to talk to me, you can.”   
  
Lance warmed, feeling a small notch of insecurity chipping away. It was relieving to hear Keith confirm they were friends, something that had never been said out loud before. He tried to hide a bashful smile.  
  
Keith was probably the last person he would expect to be so caring and gentle and reliable, but here they were, Keith by his side everyday, Keith carrying him to the kitchen to cook him breakfast, Keith saying he could talk to him. Even his closest friends thus far never seemed to care so much -- of course he loved them and they loved him, but this was different, it was detailed thorough gestures -- and it seemed everyone was tired of his talking pretty soon after knowing him. Was Keith like this with everyone else?  
  
“I… I don’t think I’ve ever been treated this kindly, dude.” he admitted, his stomach growling. “And I don’t know if I’ve given you much of a reason to. Thank you. You really don’t know how much this means to me.”   
  
That was an understatement -- to Lance, this meant a prismatic blooming of trust. It meant basking in the thought of Keith, and thinking about Keith day in and day out -- it meant that everything he looked at would remind him of Keith in some way.  It meant a sort of contentedness he’d never known.  He stared at Keith’s back with lovesick puppy dog eyes.  
  
“Then you’re hanging around the wrong people. It’s nothing.” Keith didn’t know what to do with Lance’s gratefulness. He didn’t feel like he deserved to be on the receiving end of it.  
  
And yeah, maybe Keith wanted Lance to like him most. Maybe he was cooking breakfast for a friend for the first time in his life. But it was just that. Keith was reveling in the idea of a kind of intimacy that Lance would never want from him.  
  
Lance was appreciating his friendship. Keith was shutting out desires that barely had time to form because he knew they were entirely futile.  
  
He flipped the last pancake onto the plate and then set the food down in front of Lance. He came back momentarily with the syrup bottle from the fridge and a cup of coffee for himself.  
  
“I hope you like it,” Keith said, taking a sip.  
  
Lance proceeded to eat the best pancakes he’d had in his entire life.

 

_________________________________

 

Morning had gone by smoothly. Lance mostly laid out on the couch on his laptop or playing video games and Keith had hung around for a bit before going on a run.  
  
It was nearing five now, and Keith was in the shower willing his aching muscles to relax under scorching water before he had to go into work. For a while he just leaned his head against the tile, motionless, letting the water pour over him. After the steam was almost unbearable he turned the water off and slid the curtain back, reaching for his towel.  
  
Lance had been in his room, mostly wallowing in how shitty he felt with his hangover. He just woke from a nap and was starting to feel a bit better, but he was grimey as hell -- he still hadn’t showered from his night getting plastered and running around outside.   
  
He yawned as he headed for the bathroom, towel slung over his shoulder. He opened the bathroom door with one hand and grabbed the hem of his shirt to start taking it off with this other hand.   
  
Then, he noticed Keith was standing there buck ass naked. There was just a second of hesitation. Keith gaped before wrapping the towel around his waist quickly.  
  
“SORRY,” Lance shouted, turning red hot and averting his gaze as quickly as possible.  
  
It had been too late. He already saw Keith, saw his glistening abs and hair slick and clinging to his shoulders, saw the blurry outline of his di-  
  
“It’s ok,” Keith’s heart was racing, but he kept as calm an exterior as he could, though he couldn’t help his wide eyes. “Shower’s free,” He said, staring at Lance and gesturing over his shoulder, as if he wasn’t just seen walking out of it.  
  
“Y-yeah,” he stammered. _It’s not that big of a deal it’s not that big of a deal it’s not that big of a--_

He was blushing beet red and kept looking away but then taking indulgent peeks back at Keith, then regretting seeming like a creep, and looking away again. _It’s not that big of a deal it’s not that big of a deal--_

How could he make this seem natural?? Small talk. Yeah, small talk would be great. He took a calming breath then looked up, trying his damndest to only let his eyes stay connected to Keith’s. He put on his best nonchalant face, which was not a very good one. “You’re, uh, very. Wet today.” _What the hell_   
_  
_ It was a huge deal, to Lance at least.  He couldn’t stop thinking about having Keith’s dick prodding at the back of his throat.  He leaned against the wall and smiled tightly.

“What?” Keith said. Then, words coming to him slower than ever before in his life, “I...don’t know if that was a joke or not.” Keith was quickly getting more and more incapable of handling Lance’s eyes on him. And Lance was _definitely_ looking. _Doesn’t mean anything. Anyone would have trouble keeping eye contact. He’s trying to not look because looking is not what he wants to be doing._

Keith started slowly walking around Lance for the door.   
  
As Keith neared and all the smells from his expensive (or at least expensive smelling) bathroom products flooded his senses, Lance shuddered. If he didn’t stop himself his eyes would be rolling back most likely. _God why am I being such a fucking wimp about this?_

“Thanks,” he said tightly,  “have a good clothes changing.” He wanted to immediately cover his face with his hands but settled for screaming internally at his pathetic blunders and waiting for Keith to leave the vicinity.

Keith slipped around Lance and out the door without another word.

He felt...kind of nauseous. And on an energy high. Mostly just high strung. Lance looked embarrassed. Understandable. Keith wanted, very badly, to read into the glances he felt peeling across his skin as interest. As Lance genuinely liking what he saw. Maybe drunk Lance liked boys, but the sober one didn’t. Did he?

Keith dressed quickly and then jerked open his desk drawer and took three of his xanax. Otherwise he wouldn’t survive his shift.  

Meanwhile, Lance couldn’t stop thinking about how damn hot Keith was and how gay he was being about it all. He eyed himself in the mirror, hopelessly groaning.    
  
“Why’d you have to go and be so weird about that? That was literally the set up for some rom com or some shit you dweebus. Where’s fun sexy caliente Lance? Why are you like this?” he asked his reflection, pointing finger hitting the metallic surface. He groaned more thinking about how he was the one who had gotten so flustered.   
  
“Keith was all” he dropped his voice a few octaves and added three handfuls of gravel to his tone, “Oh, I’m cool, this doesn’t faze me at all. Saw my dongo? What’s the big deal?” he grumbled and shook his head bitterly that he hadn’t actually really seen a clear image of said “dongo,” but then chided himself for invading Keith’s privacy in the first place. He hopped in the shower to cool off.

 

___________________________

 

Lance couldn’t stop thinking about how foolish he felt -- how many times had Keith seen him nearly naked at this point? The towel situation when he first moved in, the strip truth or dare fiasco? Was it really only twice? Regardless,  it never seemed to get under Keith’s near impenetrable skin, and there Lance was, nearly drooling over himself from a 3 second encounter.   
  
It was shameful.   
  
He was losing.  
  
Now it was nighttime and Lance had gotten home earlier than Keith, wherever he was. As he did laundry his mind wandered, questioning why Keith didn’t seem to care when he was scantily clad. It became an almost obsessive curiosity -- was he just not interested in Lance, or sex in general, or did he not see bodies as inherently sexualized, or -- the possibilities were endless. He carried his basket of laundry to the washer, strolling down the hallway between his and Keith’s rooms.

He could even smell Keith now, a clean fragrance, and tobacco, and coffee, and leather, because of course he drove a motorcycle, and of course he wore a leather jacket with those fingerless gloves when he did. Everywhere he looked there was Essence of Keith, and right now that was really agitating him.

He dumped his clothes into the machine and brilliance struck. 

A devious grin. A twinkle in his eye. A flare for the dramatic.

 Lance rummaged around his dresser and beamed at the article of clothing he held to the light. His most trusted ally for sluttishness, his greatest tool for combating heteronormativity,  his pair of skin-tight cut-off booty-shorts -- the pair he wore often when going clubbing back as a freshmen in college. He knew for an absolute fact that his ass looked tight, juicy, and ready for the taking in these bad boys. They were high waisted and the bottom came up so his ass cheeks were on full display. You could honestly hardly call them shorts, and they called for either thong or commando to pull off. He nodded his head in smug satisfaction. 

“Oh yeah! _”_ He’d like to see Keith _try_ to ignore these. He squirmed his way into them, an arduous and sweat-inducing process, but the results were worth it. Eying himself in the mirror, he graded his look-- the infamous shorts, his usual white and blue shirt, and a pair of knee-high white socks. He looked damn good.   
  
He went out to the living room and started playing video games on the couch, anticipating Keith’s arrival. 

Fifteen minutes earlier Keith was headed back to their apartment after getting off work at six. He worked as a server at a nondescript restaurant right off campus, a decent enough job, but extended social interaction wasn’t really his thing. So after being occupied with school until noon and work for five hours, he was exhausted and looking forward to simply being able to take off his uniform. 

He grabbed the mail on his way up the stairs since Lance likely forgot (he was right) and then unlocked and stepped inside the apartment. He heard Lance playing a video game in the living room and hung his keys on the hook in the wall before walking through the hall.

 “I got your mail. It’s all trash though-” Keith immediately short-circuited after shifting his eyes from the mail in his hands to Lance sitting on the couch. He tossed it onto the coffee table after a second had passed, like an afterthought.

Keith first and foremost did not want to jump to any conclusions. Lance wasn’t shy and he liked to wear what he wanted to. But Keith hadn’t seen him wear anything like this before. At least not for Keith to see. He didn’t let himself focus on the finer details, so as to keep the situation from likely quickly spinning right out of control. But Lance was offering up a good deal of tanned skin and thigh and-.

Lance was sitting down but Keith knew that those shorts weren’t covering anything. And the socks?

Knee high socks? 

Fortunately Keith functioned swimmingly when under pressure. Was this some bizarre response to the shower situation from that afternoon? Did Lance feel threatened, compensating in an unorthodox way? Was Lance just  trying to get a rise out of him? Did he wear that for Keith to see? Was Lance _flirting?_   

Keith thought all of this with a blank face.

A likely possibility was that Lance was simply wearing what he felt like at the time, in which case Keith really should have no reaction out of respect for his friend. This wasn’t the party at Allura’s. And when Lance flirted, he made it clear. Right? Keith thought so. That was Lance’s thing. And he also liked girls. Mostly? It was...getting harder to tell.

It didn’t matter. _So he made eyes at me a few times. Most people do,_ Keith thought. He really didn’t want to freak Lance out with unsolicited flirting.  Even though Keith could see that Lance was objectively hot and Lance seemed to be trying to make him think so.

So, deciding the best course of action was trademark self-control, Keith untied his work apron from around his waist, tossed in on the counter behind him, sat down on the couch next to Lance, and, pointedly looking only at his eyes, asked, “Mind if I join?”

 _What kind of fucked up game of gay chicken…_ Lance mused with half disbelief half aggressive competitiveness as he stared into Keith’s eyes, blinking twice. No way. No way was Keith denying him the satisfaction of - of - well, something! Anything! All he’d gotten was a moment’s pause. It wasn’t enough. He wasn’t looking for a specific reaction, just one to mention for god’s sake.   
  
And then Keith had the audacity to pull the whole “I’m a sexy guy in uniform, taking off said uniform” shtick? No fucking way.  It was a cliche. It was a low blow. It was war. Lance had to suppress an eye twitch in response to the way Keith’s arms looked while he threw off his apron but quickly waved it off as a circumstantial response to the need to Win.     
  
Lance could already tell he wasn’t going to stop until he’d gotten what he wanted. He called the bluff, giving a friendly and firm smile.   
  
“Sure dude, let me just turn up the volume.” he got up from the couch and bent forward slightly to adjust the tv, not enough to look necessarily unnatural or fake pornish, but enough that his ass was now in prominent view.

Keith would say he couldn’t believe his eyes, but he could. Lance was more stubborn than he was. Whatever point he was trying to prove right now, was being proved. Keith didn’t bother averting his gaze since Lance was facing away from him. His whole god damn ass was out.

 And Keith saw that there was definitely nothing underneath the shorts. He won in an internal struggle against the blood rushing south out said, “Get lost over there?”

“No,” he said, almost-snappy but not quite. Lance was getting a little peeved; though Keith was being courteous and kind, Lance was becoming irritated at the lack of validation. He took a breath and steadied himself against the TV stand as he thought.

Was the look tacky? Had he lost his edge? Maybe Keith wasn’t gay after all. That was presumptuous if he really thought about it. Maybe he was being homophobic, or heteronormative, or cissexist, or something internalized. He swallowed his growing anxiety, replaced it with stubborn indignation, and tried to keep his mind from buzzing so hard Keith could hear it inside his skull.

He decided it was too far to go back, and reminded himself that he didn’t half-ass anything. Pun intended. 

He glanced at one of the small speakers on the stand, raised his brows and thought, “Well, why not?” and pretended to accidentally knock it over.   
  
“Oops,” he had the audacity to say, though he did make it sound casual, as he bent all the way down to pick it up.

Keith gaped.  

 There really wasn’t any question about it at this point. Lance was doing this on purpose, right? There was no way this was unintentional.

Right? Why couldn’t he just accept it? A part of Keith refused to let go of the idea that, bent over in front of him in short shorts, Lance still really didn’t have that kind of interest in him.

He knew at this point he had to give some kind of response. Otherwise the tension would wind itself so tight they’d both suffocate.

“Nice outfit.” He couldn’t leave it at that. If Lance wasn’t actually trying to flirt with him he would think Keith was a creep. “Do you have a date or something?”

Lance smiled to himself, and then dropped it so he wouldn’t seem so pleased.

“Ah, uh, no.”  he blurted but then regretted it, feeling dorkish, “I mean yes. A date with... myself?” that seemed almost perverted given the context and he wished he could take it back. How did this somehow get turned around back on him?

“I always wear these around the house,” he lied with grandeur. 

Keith offered a short laugh. Leave it to Lance to put his ass on display and then get flustered when it’s mentioned.

“No you don’t.” He said. A fact.

“I...have.” Lance faltered, “Before.”

“Not that I’ve seen.”

“Well, now you have.” he said matter of factly.

 He plopped back down beside Keith on the couch, hunched over and leaning on his knees. He was starting to get a little discouraged; though the compliment felt good, Keith had  tossed it at him as if he were talking about dry wall installation. Here he was trying to look irresistible and there was Keith very clearly, uh, resisting.  Not even tangibly enough to really upset him, and that almost bothered him more. 

“You want a drink?” he asked, pulling a handle of tequila out from between the couch cushions. It was his couch tequila, and he was thinking he could use some himself despite his earlier hangover. He was already unscrewing the cap.

Keith stared at Lance carefully. “Nah. I haven’t really eaten anything today.” Then he quirked an eyebrow. “You want to, though? This morning’s hangover not good enough for you?”

“Since I already had one I’m immune now.” Lance said, taking a swig.

“Oh so I imagined that other hangover you had after last New Year’s, and that one after your nineteenth birthday, and that one on Christmas day.” Keith could go on but he just grinned, quite brightly,

Lance shrugged, biting back one of those embarrassing little smiles he kept getting these days whenever Keith was reasonably amiable. He was so weirdly charming in a way Lance had never fully appreciated before, or at least not like this.  Keith always managed to fluster him. Back in the day when he’d feel overwhelmed like this he would have just yelled something immature and kind of mean and then ran away. The feeling was invigorating and familiar by now. Another swig. His insides were fuzzy and warm.  There was a pause for a moment.

“Those were holidays so they don’t count.” he reasoned. 

“There’s no reason for what you just said to have any validity,” Keith leaned forward and took the bottle from Lance. He took a long drink himself, even though he’d declined minutes ago when Lance had offered. Then he got up from the couch and set it on the kitchen counter. Keith unbuttoned his long sleeve shirt as he walked back, pure intentions, simply tired of the layers. Underneath it was a plain white undershirt. 

“You’re cut off,” Keith said as he sat back down, arms stretched out on the back of the couch.  

Lance’s gaze drifted along Keith’s physique, studying the fine hairs on his arm, the slender but calloused fingers, the curve of his jaw for just a few seconds before returning to his dark and steady eyes.  

He made eye contact so wouldn’t oggle at Keith’s shoulders (toned, smooth, flawless) or his pretty boy collar bones or his fucking arms. Those arms were going to kill him.

Keith was sure he watched Lance check him out, and while a few weeks earlier he would have immediately dismissed it as less than nothing, this was now. Keith put the pieces together as best as he could, eyes heavy on Lance in front of him. Lance decided to wear those shorts for whatever reason. Lance decided to put himself on display, for some reason. Lance was staring at him when Keith took his shirt off. And then there’s the matter of the behavior at Allura’s party. 

He had to at least conclude that Lance liked the way he looked. The one glaring issue was that Keith had never seen Lance romantically interested or otherwise with a boy. He sure wasn’t acting straight. But Keith couldn’t be Lance’s gay experiment if that happened to be the extent of his interest. He settled on stoking the fire, safely, as he had been. He leaned back into the couch, crossing his arms over his chest.

“How did you fair while I was at work?” Keith remembered leaving earlier that day. He hadn’t seen Lance after the shower incident until coming home now.

Lance could hardly tell the truth (“I’ve been thinking about you all day”) so he said something else.  He leaned back and crossed his legs, displaying more thigh. 

“I’ve just been cleaning and junk. What about you? How was work?”

Keith wondered if Lance thought he didn’t notice the deliberate movement of his exposed legs.

“The usual,” Keith finally offered. He’d been staring off at a point behind Lance’s head but was actually studying the curve of his thigh and ass in those shorts through his periphery.

Then he decided to pull somewhat of an unspoken illegal move. Keith felt it was just inappropriate. Logically, it shouldn’t be problematic. If Lance wasn’t into him, he probably wouldn’t think much of it. Keith also wasn’t even sure it was something legitimate outside of bad boy romance fiction. But he had nothing to lose, either way. Keith returned his gaze back to Lance and then brought the clasp of one of his leather gloves to his teeth. He snapped it open and tugged it off his hand, repeated with the other. Keith set them down on the coffee table and then finished his answer.

“I had to bartend at work and I don’t like being hit on by the customers.” Keith realized his voice was a bit more dark and gravely than he intended. Blame it on the tequila.

Chills ran down Lance’s spine and he was almost certain his pupils had blown out immediately. Oh, the things he could imagine involving those glove-- _Keep it cool, keep it cool, Lance. You’re the one in charge here._

“Woooaaah, bartender in the house.” he sang in feigned teasing, somehow mostly conveying that Lance was impressed by the job. A small smile found its way to his face. “What’s not to like about being hit on? Sounds like a ball to me.” he continued. 

It still wasn’t enough -- if this were a game, Keith still had the upperhand after that glove stunt. How could he possibly regain his footing? Another lightbulb clicked on. He stretched up so that a little strip of his tummy and hip was revealed, then relaxed again, covering the skin once more but slumping so that his shirt dropped off his right shoulder. He looked over innocently at Keith.

Keith was indignant. If Lance wanted a game he would get one.

“Well,” Keith began again, staring at Lance’s shoulder with fire in his eyes, “I’m not there trying to be hit on. And I don’t get what they’re seeing when they look at me.” Keith stretched his arms over his head, biceps taught, his chest thrust forward and his nipples coincidentally hard. Then he settled back into the couch at just the right angle so his t shirt rode up to his naval. Not a lot of skin exposed. His happy trail, and the cut of his hips.

“Also none of them are my type.”

Lance felt like he was being set ablaze. Their game suddenly felt very far away, now entirely consumed by a flooding of lust. There were no images or thoughts anymore, just urges, desires, animalistic. He stilled, his breathing heavier in his chest, and forgot all about his charismatic pep. His face was face near-somber as he drilled his eyes into Keith’s. He felt on edge, like he didn’t know if he was about to pounce or not.

“And what is your type?”  

 Keith could feel his eyes smoldering with intensity but ignored it. What was Lance trying to pull? It could be plain curiousity, but that was honestly the less likely possibility at this point. Not after Lance had given him and was continuing to give him such a show. The threat of _gay experiment_ laced Keith’s every thought.

“I’m not sure. Dating isn’t my thing.” He said carefully. Normally he would have stopped there but the past weeks he had spent with Lance had gradually removed the superficial layer of his very deeply embedded fortress of privacy.  He continued, “Someone who looks very different from me.” A pause. “Someone who is very different from me.”

Lance’s head felt heavy but his gaze couldn’t be pulled from the boy sitting in front of him. It was like Keith had his own gravitational pull, like Lance could be drawn in and never return.   
  
He was too far in to remind himself that this interaction was bordering on too intense for the barriers he’d carefully built and constantly reinforced to still make sense. He took a mental step back, and got up to pad to the kitchen and take another swig despite Keith’s insistence. While in the kitchen, he realized there were a lot of things he could say, but he settled for a simple, 

“I guess I never really noticed you dating anyone this whole time I’ve known you, huh? You ever date anyone?” but he was hoping to get some kind of confirmation on Keith’s sexuality, curiosity nipping at him.  While he’d assumed a lot by now, he still didn’t actually know for sure if Keith was interested in men or sex or romance or anything other than his pursuits. He came back and sat on the couch beside Keith. 

A pause. Keith knew he couldn’t keep staring at Lance instead of answering every time he asked a question but Lance’s questions were making Keith stare.

“I’ve dated a few people. Nobody worth mentioning.” Then he added, because he couldn’t say _I’m single, Lance. In case you were interested,_ “All before college, though.”

“How mysterious,” Lance hummed, humor still very present in his voice. He tried to hide his satisfaction but did so poorly. It felt like a small victory hearing him denounce interest in anyone else. He picked up that it must have been a touchy topic and decided to drop it for now. “But, same.”   
  
Keith was plagued with a mantra of _Who did you date. What is your type. Who did you-_

“I figured.” He said.  
  
Now sprawled out on the couch, Lance was little closer to Keith than he would normally be. Though not quite touching. Every inch of bared skin felt like it was tingling when exposed to Keith’s gaze. He was feeling very hot, almost uncomfortably so at this point, and he wanted his clothes off.    

He shot up from the couch and exclaimed, “Dude, come swimming with me.”  

Keith’s first instinct was to immediately decline, seeing as swimming was a hassle. But, he felt like this was an unspoken opportunity. Or maybe a turning point.

 Probably not, seeing as Lance was tipsy, and this was beginning to be a pattern. But Keith, as always, couldn’t help himself.

 “Yeah, sure.”

Then he stood up and pulled his t shirt over his head, slowly, then unbuttoned and tugged off his pants. Left in his boxer briefs, he wasn’t showing too much. Lance was showing more in his ridiculous shorts.

“I don’t have a bathing suit,” He offered as explanation as he set his clothes, folded, on the couch. “You want me to grab you a towel while you get changed? 

Lance paid very close attention to Keith’s body, the dewy skin,  the toned arms, the six pack, the way it moved as he stripped.  He had a couple scars and some noteworthy beauty marks. He didn’t even look real, it seemed, enchanting but dangerous. He suppressed the thought that this is what Keith would be likely wearing at some point if they were fucking.  

“Nice briefs.” he responded, raising his brows in superficial nonchalance, meeting eyes once again like everything was very casual. He’d completely forgotten about Keith’s question about the towels.  It was normal for bros to admire one another’s nipples right? 

He slid his socks off and then tore off his shirt, deciding he would just wear the shorts half out of convenience and half because he was a baby slut.    
  
He stretched languidly and then all at once shouted “Race you there, 321!” and bolted out of the door, actually sliding down the railing of the stairs.  It was cool outside and the wind felt nice rushing through his hair. Lance felt like a rowdy freshman, laughing loudly all the way down.  


	8. ¿Por Que No Los Dos?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god!! y'all are so sweet thank you so much for your comments!! sorry about so much unresolved sexual tension i know it is truly ridiculous but.... so are keith and lance

Keith was immediately rushing with adrenaline. His body responded to the suggestion of challenge without his permission. Especially so when it was Lance. He grabbed two towels from the closet in the hall because he knew that otherwise they’d pay later. 

Then he ran out the door after Lance. He knew the way Lance would take, and that by now he would be about twenty seconds away. Keith buckled down. He’d need to pull out all the stops if he wanted to get there first.

So he did. 

Fifteen seconds of sprinting and he saw Lance bounding towards the pool gate. Keith grinned.

“Here,” Keith threw one of the towels in Lance’s face as he passed him. It made a satisfying and surprisingly loud thump. 

“What the fuck,” Lance huffed after being halted in his tracks by the towel attack, vision obstructed. He wrangled with it and quickly caught up to Keith, though he had to brace himself and catch his breath.  Why did he have to be so good at everything?  He eyed Keith with a degree of venom. 

“You forgot your towel,” Keith opened the gate and gestured for Lance to go first. “Look, you can still win.” 

This only infuriated Lance further. 

“I don’t want your pity win, Keith!” he said with disbelief and offense. He stood unmoving, waiting for Keith to enter first so as to prove his point.

“Then don’t act mad when I beat you.” Keith walked inside the gate and Lance followed.

“Thendon’tactmadwhenIbeatyou,” Lance imitated in a ridiculous voice. He cocked his head back and squinted pettily.    
  
Keith opened his mouth, and then Lance just fucking shoved him in the pool. He stood at the edge and laughed heartily down at Keith, who had resurfaced with black hair plastered to his face. He shook it out of his eyes and gave Lance an absolutely dangerous look. 

“Why’d you have to do that.” He grabbed onto the ledge and hoisted himself out of the pool.      
  
Lance sprung into a wide defensive fighting stance, arms outstretched protectively.  

“You made me, Keith.” he justified nervously, as if he were talking down someone with a weapon. He might as well have been, really. 

“I didn’t make you do anything,” Keith took a step forward. His briefs were clinging to him in all kinds of ways that he tried to ignore. “You’re a sore loser.” 

Lance was simultaneously very afraid and very turned on. There was a darkness in Keith’s voice that sent chills down his spine, and he looked like an underwear model on the cover of sports illustrated with the water trickling down his toned body. He gulped.    
  
“On the contrary, I’m a hilarious winner. We just weren’t playing the same game,” Lance retorted as he slowly stepped backwards. He felt like they were fencing. 

“You said,” Keith dropped his predatory stance and then beamed like Lance, “Race you there!” As soon as the words were out his face dropped. “By the way, you’ve backed yourself into a corner.” 

Lance looked behind him and realized Keith meant that literally. He swallowed hard and leaned back against the cool tile of the changing rooms as Keith came closer.

“What are you gonna do about it?” he had the audacity to challenge despite clearly having the lesser hand. 

Keith stepped forward very slowly. He placed his hands on Lance’s shoulders, almost gently, and then he smiled, gripped hard and hoisted him up. 

“Throw you in,” He answered, turning around and carrying Lance over his shoulder.    


“Wait!” Lance protested, actually thumping his hands against Keith’s back, legs kicking wildly. It was no use.    
  
“Keith! It was a jo-”

Keith tossed him in without hesitation and Lance got a mouthful of chlorine water as he was hurled face first into the pool. He resurfaced and growled, darting expertly to the edge to grapple at Keith in an attempt to drag him in. 

“You think you’re so tough, huh?” he jeered, latching onto an ankle. 

Keith was unmoving stone. He looked at Lance huffing and puffing at him from in the water and crossed his arms. “Yeah. Kind of.”

_ Why does he have to look so hot when he’s being so infuriating?  _ Lance knew he had the advantage of gravity and a lifetime of swimming on his side. He was on the swim team throughout his whole life and worked as a lifeguard in high school. He quickly shot back under, flattened his feet on the floor of the pool, and then propelled himself up, jutting up from the water almost like a dolphin. He soaked Keith in his surprise attack and in the ruckus grabbed hold of both of his biceps, pulling Keith in with him.    
  
The two of them plunged back into the pool with a noisy splash and Lance would have laughed if it wouldn’t have filled his lungs.     
  
When Lance opened his eyes underwater to gloat at Keith, he was stunned by the ethereal quiet -- the two of them moving in slow motion, Keith above Lance, his hair like dark ink haloing his face, the moonlight bouncing through water and dancing on his skin, their bodies close and weightless. 

Keith stared back. They were floating together for a few precious seconds in which Lance’s hands around his biceps made Keith realize how absolutely little he’d been touched his entire life. How extreme an effect that could be. Lance’s eyes were so bright.

They resurfaced and Keith coughed water out of his lungs. 

“I can’t believe you can jump like a dolphin.”

Lance laughed at that and realized he was still holding onto Keith’s biceps -- he didn’t particularly want to let go but did to save face. He slicked back his hair and threaded through the water backwards, still facing Keith but using his legs to glide away.    
  
“I’m a really good swimmer.” he said. Fact. 

“I actually already knew that.” Keith followed Lance to the edge. “I saw you practicing in high school every once in awhile.” 

Lance snorted. “You? Watching me? Weren’t you too busy being the beloved teen prodigy?” 

Lance genuinely found it hard to believe -- Keith had been very well liked and had graduated top of the class with rigorous after school activities. Lance was alright at some stuff (swimming, art, crying in the bathroom) but his grades suffered and it was easy to feel a bit obsolete despite his friend group and general loudness. He couldn’t imagine Keith so much as looking his way spare the times Lance would go out of his way to annoy him. 

Keith bristled. “I’m not a prodigy.” 

He thought of high school. What he spent his time doing. Working himself into the ground so he wouldn’t have time to think about anything. Trying not to cut his losses and off himself when he did think about anything. Shiro having to deal with him when he tried something anyway. 

Being alone.

“And I was busy. But I watched you a few times.” 

Lance softened, reaching the edge of the pool and looking at Keith with the couple feet of distance between them now, eyes big and full of questions.  

“What?” Keith asked, tentative. 

Lance fumbled for words. He felt something was off -- that he’d struck a nerve or something -- but didn’t know why, or what to even ask.    
  
“Did I upset you?” He settled for, not used to being so forthright with something like this, but what else could he have said anyway? 

“No, you didn’t,” Keith tried to keep his voice level. He could have left it there but that likely wouldn’t satisfy Lance, who could read Keith better than anyone he’d ever met before. Granted, Lance had no competition.

“I guess I’m wondering if there was ever,” He paused, thinking, “Or is, something real behind your whole rivalry thing.” Keith couldn’t make eye contact. “You always sound a little bitter when you bring up high school. Me being a “prodigy”.” 

Lance watched the water ripple around him from his gentle breathing. He had a lot of mental boxes to unpack at this.    


“Well, I…” he started, “It’s complicated?” he knew that probably wouldn’t be enough of an answer. 

“I was really kind of, uh,” he searched for another but couldn’t find one, “obsessed with you--- not to be weird or anything-- I don’t know. I was jealous of you. I wanted you to think I was cool or something. On the same level. I was never bitter, really; I always thought very highly of you. I just didn’t know how to express anything.” he fiddled with his fingers.  “Does any of that make sense?”

“Yeah,” Keith actually smiled, “That’s what I figured now.” He looked at Lance. “But for a long time I thought you hated me from the moment you saw me.”

Lance chuckled for just a second, thinking about how in actuality he’d been slapped in the face by his non-straightness the from first time he saw Keith. He tried to stifle it.  

“What’s so funny?”   
  
“I was thinking about your baby mullet in high school.” he lied.

Keith didn’t buy it, but if it made Lance uncomfortable enough to fib he wouldn’t press it. “Lance do you really think I have a mullet? Cause honestly this is not what a mullet looks like.” Keith imitated exasperation. “Maybe I should cut it all off.” 

“No!” Lance cried too enthusiastically, even reaching a hand out. 

“That’s what I thought. You like it.”   
  
Lance sucked his teeth but couldn’t stop from smiling while he rolled his eyes. “Whatever,” he said as he splashed at Keith. 

Keith dodged and then said, “So was the skin tight speedo a requirement for the whole team or just your preference?” 

_ “ _ ¿Por que no los dos?” He grinned slyly and remembered what he was currently wearing -- only now his shorts were even tighter and soaked through.  

Keith looked down blatantly at Lance’s shorts. “No importa. Se ve bien en ti.” He didn’t take AP Spanish for nothing.

Lance cocked an eyebrow and swam closer.  “Careful there, Keith. Someone might say you’re complimenting me.”

“I am.”

If Lance could roll around in a pile of compliments from Keith he would. If he could bottle them and age them like fine wine for later consumption he’d be ecstatic. He was practically glowing with satisfaction.   
  
“Oh, what would all those fangirls of yours say if they knew.” Lance said. 

“What fangirls?” It was hard to tell if Keith was oblivious or just being difficult.

Lance pursed his lips. “You know what I’m talking about, Keith. Just about everyone who meets you winds up falling at your feet.”  

Keith was about to ask if Lance was included in that statistic. 

“That’s not true.” Then he added, “The fangirls in high school just got on my nerves. Kind of disrespectful after a certain point. Especially the ones who’d only be more interested after I told them I was gay.” 

Lance’s ears perked at that; he delighted, rejoiced, and sighed with relief.   _ “HE’S GAY!!!!!!!!! KEITH’S GAY!!!!!!!!!!! I KNEW IT!!!!!!!!!”  _ his internal voice shouted. 

“Know whatcha mean.” he responded sagely, trying to play it cool. 

Keith stared. “Wouldn’t a hoard of fangirls be right up your alley?” 

“I meant the other part.” he explained. 

“Aren’t you straight?” 

Lance looked offended, balking at the accusation.  

“Dude, I’m bi.” he stated, incredulous.

Keith short circuited. Then he thought of every single interaction he’d ever had with Lance. They ran through his head like film. Jesus christ. 

He wanted to laugh hysterically. 

“Oh,” He managed. 

Lance cracked a questioning smile. “You didn’t know I was bi…?”  He was one to talk for not having been sure of Keith’s gayness but that was his little secret. 

“I’ve never seen you with a guy before. And you flirt with girls a lot.” Keith’s mind was still reeling. “I’m sorry for assuming.” 

Lance wanted to ask if Keith was interested, if he liked him, if they were going to hold hands or what. But he was suddenly feeling bashful. 

“The dualities of man,” Lance said.

“When did you know?” Keith regretted it as soon as he’d asked. Too private. 

Lance hummed. “Hard to say. I have a really efficient denial system programmed in this guy.” he knocked on his skull a few times to clarify. “I was calling myself a gaybo non-ironically-ironically in 11th grade, but I was thinking about, uh, guys” --he didn’t want to say “You, Keith” -- “early freshmen year. It’s like I knew but I didn’t acknowledge? I don’t know how I didn’t come to full terms with it until a good year or two in college. And I never really ‘came out,’ I just crawled through the air ducts connecting the closet to the rest of the house. I guess. Isn’t that incredible?” 

“No. I’d say that sounds pretty like you.” Keith looked away. Lance confirming his sexuality was making him slip. He couldn’t stop staring. Thinking of what it meant. If it meant anything. Of how Lance was quickly becoming less of a repressed crush and more of the only thing Keith ever thought about. “I’m sorry it was hard for you, though.” 

Lance waved the condolences away outwardly, but inwardly collected them to cherish later. 

“How about you?” Lance asked.  

Keith considered the question. “For a while I thought I just didn’t like anyone. But by eighth grade I knew.” Keith couldn’t add that he’d gotten 200% more gay after meeting Lance, subconscious thoughts or no. 

“That’s so early!” Lance exclaimed.

“The amount of attention I got from girls let me know really.”

Lance considered this. “Makes sense. That must have sucked big time.”

“It wasn’t all that bad.” Keith actually wanted to cringe thinking about it but didn’t. “And all that time I spent not dating let me focus on school.”

Lance laughed hard. “Wish I could say the same, my dude. I settled for not dating  _ and _ not focusing on school.” 

This was the second time Lance said he hadn’t dated much. It was entirely incongruent with the way he acted but Keith knew Lance was being honest. He wouldn’t let himself bask in that satisfaction for very long. 

“Didn’t stop you from getting into art school.” 

“ _ Did _ mean that to go to school I’m taking out butt tons of loans that will haunt me for the rest of my life.” he said with finger guns.  

“Ah. Right, sorry.” Keith wanted to say  _ I’ll fucking pay them off for you  _ but couldn’t for obvious reasons. 

“You’re not taking out any?” Lance asked, curious.

“No.” He tried to answer casually, so as not to seem too much of an ass. “I got a full ride. And then some. So now I’m getting paid to go to school.”

Lance stared as the new information processed.  _ Paid. To go to school.  _ The concept was incredible and unfathomable to Lance. His gaze trailed up and down Keith’s body, as if he were doubly impressed by what he saw and jealous all in one. He thought about how Keith also had a job, a well paying job at that, and thought about his nice clothes, and that nice bike, and his shiny hair.  _ Why is this turning me on so much--   _

He swallowed.  _ Deflect! Deflect! _   


“Why do you still work so much, rich kid?” 

Keith rolled his eyes but didn’t counter it. “I don’t work that much. It just keeps me from...” He faltered. “It keeps me busy.”

" _I can keep you busier,”_ Lance wanted to say.    
  
“You gotta have more fun, Keithington McMoneypants.” he said instead. 

“You have got to stop with the nicknames,” Keith said, wondering why they turned him on in some bizarre way. “I have lots of fun, all the time.”

“Oh yeah? Name one time.”  Lance said, not even acknowledging the nickname part.

“I’m having fun right now.” 

Lance had already geared up to banter, and his little retorting expression hung on his face for a moment while he registered that what Keith had said was very nice. 

“Me too,” he said somehow sassily.

“Are you somehow turning this into a competition?”

“No?” Lance said competitively. 

“Then I guess you aren’t winning, either.” 

Lance was never winning, it seemed. He glided through the water. 

“I’m having fun too.” he conceded.

“I know. You already said that,” Keith half smiled and then splashed water into Lance’s face. 

Lance glared and dipped down to do a handstand underwater, then used his feet to kick a tsunami splash at Keith’s face, w ho grabbed his ankle and held effortlessly as Lance flailed underwater. After a few seconds he let go and couldn’t help but laugh. L ance came up sputtering for breath.     
  
“That’s IT!” he shouted in between coughs. He deftly tried to swim to the edge of the pool, crawled out, and did a masterful cannonball right next to Keith.

Keith just laughed harder as the water splashed him. 

“You’re kinda cute when you’re angry.” There. He said it. Keith figured he had to start flirting at some point. And that was tame enough. 

“You haven’t seen me angry yet, pretty boy.” he said as a grin tugged at his mouth and he pretended he wasn’t blushing. 

“Is that some kind of threat?” Keith blinked. “Wait, you think I’m pretty?” 

“Everyone thinks you’re pretty, Keith.” he said.

Keith just shrugged it off while his mind raced. He didn’t know why Lance kept saying things like that. Like they were obvious and easily accepted facts.  Then again it was a good way to deflect the attention. It was like saying,  _ it’s not that significant that I think you’re pretty because everyone does. Nothing special.  _

It made it casual. He thought of “everyone” thinking he was pretty and ended up thinking about their friend group. Which led him to another tangent. One that dampened his mood considerably. 

“Lance, can I ask you something?” 

“Yeah, dude.” Lance said, concern laced in his voice. “What’s up?”

“Do you want to get with Allura?” Keith kept absolutely everything out of his voice. Entirely blank. “Just curious.”

Lance balked at how forward Keith was. Then again, it was in character.  _ “Damn, is your name ‘force trauma’? Cuz you’re blunt as fuck.”  _ Lance thought. He should have expected the question.    
  
“No.” he said, trying to make his eyes communicate ‘I want to get with  **you** .’ 

“You’ve been flirting with her since the second you saw her.”  _ Her and any number of other girls.  _ Keith was suddenly getting uneasy, his stomach tight. He could only dream of being on the receiving end of that kind of attention. 

“Yeah, it’s a bad habit -- probably stemmed from an early coping mechanism to deal with internalized homophobia and to keep my conservative family members off my gay trail.” he explained, cringing internally at how it must have made Keith feel despite technically not having done anything wrong. 

“It’s not useful to me anymore though.” he added, code for ‘if you make a move, I’m all yours.’ He wondered if any of his subtext was coming across to Keith but couldn’t risk the potential rejection involved with being forthright.  

Keith had thought of that explanation as a possibility. Lance never seemed entirely present in his straight flirting. There was a very slight inflection to it that read as compulsory. Still, that did little to ease Keith’s fear of being some kind of exotic desire. Like he was to everyone else. He was simply an archetype. 

“Sorry you felt that way. I’m glad you moved out and got away from that.” 

“Why do you ask?” Lance inquired despite his hesitation.

Keith was bitter. He couldn’t help but feel secondhand in comparison to Lance’s long history of girl crushes.

But not bitter enough to keep from saying, “I thought for a long time I might be into you if you weren’t straight.”

Lance’s heart felt like it jumped into his throat and then fell again and then did a weird anxious dance. There was a flicker of hope, but was Keith really saying he was interested? It really didn’t seem like it. His mind was caught on the word “might” and replayed it over and over. The question could have lead to a direct action, but he was left with something vague, and that made him feel like Keith was declining in the most polite way he could. He thought he could cry, but instead his eyes just glossed over and he smiled tightly.    
  
“Well, now you know.” he said with faux casualness and shrugged. 

“Yeah,” Keith answered, “Now I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY ABOUT THEIR ANGSTY NONSENSE I SWEAR THEYLL GET IT TOGETHER REAL SOON!!! next chapter coming very soon


	9. An Ethical Nurse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith is sick and fluff is imminent

Two weeks later, Keith was climbing up the stairs to their apartment at two in the morning. Not bad, for his track record. He usually did his compulsive exercise at four or five. 

He reached the landing, hand shaking as he unlocked the door and heat coming off of him in thick waves. His head was a blank white space with fluorescent light buzzing overtones and the thump of blood drumming in his ears. He felt completely and utterly empty.

Keith knew he was slipping. He wasn’t sleeping at all lately. Not even trying. He worked and exercised religiously. He managed two meals a day. He was always angry and never expressive of it. He tasted copper and he had kaleidoscope vision but he tugged off his shirt and walked to the bathroom in silence.  He heard the sound bite of Outkast’s “Hey ya”, that repetition of “alright alright alright alright” that goes on indefinitely and thought he might have been hallucinating but then determined that it was indeed coming from Lance’s room.

_ Funny,  _ Keith thought to himself, remembering the list of rules Lance had presented so many months ago. One of them saying “not to worry about music coming from my room late at night”. Keith let the bizarre audio layer over the top of his full mind/body dissociation, a small and comforting reminder of Lance, as he passed out under the running water of the shower. 

____________________________________

Lance had been holding in pee for twenty minutes now. When he first tried to go, he’d been surprised by the sound of the shower head running, and he’d been periodically checking back every 3 minutes or so. He bounced with discomfort and frowned.    
  
Keith normally took very short showers. Lance was already prone to paranoia, but his new concern for Keith as they’d grown together the past couple months exacerbated it beyond anything he’d known before.    
  
Plus, he really had to pee.    
  
Finally at a boiling point, he paced to the front of the bathroom door and knocked.    
  
“Uh, buddy?” he called out. 

No answer. The water kept running.   
  
He knocked again.    
  
“Hey, are you okay?” he tried again, a panic seizing him. 

A thump. Then nothing.

He didn’t know what was taking over him, but it was like he literally could not stop himself from opening that door and entering, worry so much more powerful than bashfulness now. As he entered, a cloud of steam assaulted him as it slowly trailed out of the bathroom. Jesus, Keith liked the water hot.    
  
Then Lance saw Keith lying in the tub, unconscious. He was sitting up, barely, his head drooping forward under the pour of water. Some discarded clothes sat by the foot of the bathtub but Keith hadn’t gotten everything off before passing out. His sweatpants were shiny black, soaked with water. 

“Woah!” Lance exclaimed. He quickly turned off the water and reached for Keith, gently shaking his shoulder. “Hey, Keith. Keith?” 

Keith opened his eyes and stared at Lance blankly. Then he looked at his sweatpants clinging to his thighs, as if disappointed. He slicked back the hair that was sticking to his face. 

“Do you know how long I’ve been in here?”  

“At least twenty minutes, probably more.” Lance said, crouching to be at eye level. He instinctively brushed back a strand that was clinging to Keith’s neck and then kept the hand on his shoulder. “What’s going on?”

Keith side-eyed Lance. This was where he’d brush it off. Give any number of non answers and then retreat to his room for isolation. Say he was fine and  _ stop worrying about me. _

“I must have passed out after I got back. I was running.” Keith tried sitting up, failed, fell back against the cold tiles, “I’m sorry for hogging the bathroom.” 

“That’s no problem, man.” he said, almost more stressed by Keith’s nonchalance. He felt for Keith’s pulse at his wrists, then tried again at his neck. It was like a ghost. 

“Have you eaten?” Lance asked. He should have included a time parameter. “Anytime today? How much sleep have you gotten?” 

Keith actually laughed. A lot. More than he’d ever laughed in front of Lance. None of it seemed real. Keith had long ago given up agonizing over whether his reality was actual. Everything felt like a dream when you didn’t sleep. 

“You’re a nice guy, Lance.” Keith said with a smile before his eyes rolled back into his head. 

___________________________

Lance had gone into mother-hen mode, which was surprisingly calm and efficient if someone was in need. He had suppressed his stress response and scooped Keith up into his arms, like an echo of when Keith had done the same for him a few weeks ago. Keith was still conscious but very weak.  He laid him out on their couch and diligently peeled off his soaked pants-- Lance had already seen Keith in his underwear plenty of times by now, so he treaded cautiously but casually, looking for signs of unease but not uncomfortable himself.    
  
“Be right back,” he said, quickly striding into Keith’s room and grabbing a pair of underwear and sweatpants. He grabbed one of his own big soft sweaters since Keith didn’t really have any comfy clothes and then returned. 

He automatically brought Keith away from the couch and pulled the sweater over his head, then guided his arms through the holes. Lance noticed how it pooled around him, covering his thighs and well past his hands, and thought suddenly that Keith looked small and fragile.    
  
“Are you strong enough to change the rest or do you need some help?” he asked gently. 

“I’m good,” Keith answered, voice low and filled with gravel. “Thank you Lance.” He took the rest of the clothes. The sweater engulfed him so he safely changed his underwear right there in front of Lance and then pulled on the sweats.   

“I’m sorry you found me like that. I’m fine now.”    
  
“You have nothing to be sorry about.” Lance said firmly. He chose not to comment on the fact that Keith was clearly not fine.    
  
He went to the kitchen and retrieved water, applesauce, and bread. He handed Keith the glass first.     
  
“Drink as much of this as you can.” he said as he sat down beside Keith.

Keith drank the water before he could think too long about it but felt his stomach lurch. He jerked the glass away and clapped a hand over his mouth, coughing. He tasted the blood before he pulled his hand away and saw red. He kept silent though he knew Lance saw.

Lance gulped, struggling to remain collected. What did this mean? Was this a medical emergency? Should Lance call an ambulance? Was Keith going to die on him?  _ Relax, stay calm, get more information _ . 

“Does that happen often?” Lance asked, right on the edge of freaking out for real. 

Keith stared at the blood and then closed his fist and slowly turned to Lance. “Not that often.”

“Do you know what causes it?” Lance asked while getting up to fetch a paper towel. 

“No. I usually have a cough though. Especially after I work out.”

Lance hummed. “Keith, that’s uh,” he searched for the words, “that’s not a good sign. Can I take you to the doctor?” 

“No,” Keith answered immediately. “I’m really ok.”

“Keith, I think you should maybe go to the hospital.” Lance said. “I’ll go with you! You don’t even know what it is, and this is really serious. I’m not trying to be a bummer here but,” he didn’t really have a finish to the sentence so he just dabbed at the blood at the corner of Keith’s mouth and palm.

“I just can’t sleep.” Keith said, hopelessly. 

Lance nodded gravely. “I know you don’t like them, but could you take a sleeping pill tonight just to… maybe catch up?” 

Keith thought for a long time. He really needed to sleep or things could get ugly. Uglier.

“Ok. But just because it’s the weekend. They really fuck me up. I might be out for a long time.” 

Lance actually smiled and let out a sigh of relief. “Don’t worry. I’ll guard your sleeping body. I’m a pretty good nurse too.” 

“I don’t need a nurse,” Keith answered, thinking about Lance in a nurse costume. Then he figured, what the hell. “But if you want to wear the outfit for me I won’t stop you.”

Lance’s jaw dropped as he swatted at Keith’s arm. “Behave! You’re dying!”

Keith laughed and his throat burned. “I’m not dying.” 

The tension having mostly faded, Lance was feeling just sappy enough to roll his eyes affectionately and go in for a hug. Keith was getting used to being hugged like a human so he hugged back but he still didn’t know what the big deal was.

“Seriously though, Mullet, can I please take you to a doctor soon? Like really soon?”

“Yeah.” Keith said. “I don’t think they’ll find anything though.” 

“Ok, ok, we’ll see. Eat.” 

Keith schooled himself. Getting anything in his stomach during this kind of episode was always rough.  He began to eat quickly, and thought of how Lance had given him the same food the other time he’d been found unconscious on the floor. Very quickly, the insecurity started to seize him. This was the second time now that Lance had found him passed out and utterly vulnerable. What would he do when Lance inevitably started doing higher level intervention? When he started really asking why the hell Keith was like this? 

The cause, not the symptoms.

He was itching to isolate himself. 

Keith stood up. Too fast, he almost toppled over. He really was weak. He walked slowly to the kitchen and threw out the empty applesauce cup. Then he turned around.

“I’m gonna-” He realized he had nothing to excuse himself with. “Thanks for taking care of me. I’m going to work on some homework or something.”

Lance looked at Keith with almost a level of offense.

“Stop deflecting. I’m really here, and you can’t shake me off!” 

Keith looked a bit startled. 

“What? I’m not-” Keith tried. He was having a hard time with words, “I’m ok- just,” His hand flew to his head in a wave of pain. “Look, you don’t have to do any of this. I know it must be stressful and kind of annoying so-” Keith rubbed his eyes vigorously, “Yeah.” 

Lance sighed and closed the distance between them. He put his hand on his Keith’s shoulder again.    
  
“Hey, I’m here because I want to be.” he said in a considerably softer voice.

Keith actually jumped at the contact. “Sorry,” He said, eyes wide. Lance’s hand felt startlingly real against the backdrop of stinging exhaustion and fuzzy dissociation from physical reality. 

“Like I said, nothing to be sorry for. Go sit on the couch; I’m gonna cook something that isn’t turtle food for you to eat.” Lance moved the situation forward like he were steering a ship.    
  
“Ok.” Keith answered. Lance was adamant. Keith realized that it was a necessary quality for anyone trying to deal with him. He also realized it was damn attractive. He walked over to the couch and sat down.  “Ok, yeah."

___________________________

Lance had cooked a quick black beans and rice, and the two of them ate from their spots on the couch. 

“Lance,” Keith began, “This is really good.” He set his plate down. “And I don’t go for food much anymore.” 

Lance felt his validation meter inch up even higher. He smiled warmly. “Just gonna jot that on the growing list of things you've said that foreshadow you being a vampire. How ya feeling?” 

“Better. I wonder how I would feel if I ate three meals a day.”

Lance chuckled despite himself.  “Hey, would you like --” he paused, wanting to be careful here. He’d been thinking about this for a long time and didn’t want to seem like a creep, preying on Keith’s vulnerability. Knowing that he couldn’t drop it after he started it (Keith’s very tenacious) and that he would not be able to improvise an alternative, he decided to just say it anyway.    
  
“Would you like it if I played with your hair? It’s really comforting to me usually. It’s ok if you’re not cool with that though.” 

Keith stilled. That was not what he was expecting. He considered several things all at once while staring at Lance. 

He’d never really had anyone play with his hair before. Shiro used to find him like this in early high school, but they weren’t touchy with each other, neither being forward in that regard at all. And Shiro wasn’t Lance. Keith knew at this point he had a vicious crush on Lance. He also knew his scalp and body in general were hyper sensitive, so he could only imagine what having Lance’s fingers running through his hair would cause. 

But then again, whatever. 

“Yeah, sure. If you want to.” 

Lance thought he was going to explode from the surge in validation tonight. He was overwhelmed, both by how honored he felt that Keith was letting him in, and by how vulnerable he felt simply by letting himself be direct. Without their little games and arguments to cover it up, the intimacy between them was impossible to ignore.    
  
“Noice.” he said, “then get over here.” He patted his lap.

Keith didn’t move at first. Right. Lay his head down in Lance’s lap. He thought of the best way to keep it classy and laid down on his back, looking up at Lance’s face. He relaxed his arms at his sides and didn’t think about Lance’s dick. 

Lance’s spindly fingers started gingerly, just barely brushing the baby hairs at Keith’s forehead. Softly, he pushed Keith’s bangs back, and while he thought he might make some sort of comment on the rarity of the sight, he held onto it. He couldn’t keep from staring, though. He felt like he could stare at Keith until the world ended and he still wouldn’t have studied enough. Keith’s eyes were downcast anyway.    
  
It was tense. Very tense. But profound.

Keith had a bit of trouble breathing for a minute. He’d underestimated the effect of it. Lance’s fingers in his hair immediately sent his body prickling with energy. It went straight to his nipples and he had to bite his lip at once. Was he really this absolutely starved for touch?

Keith’s hair was so soft. How was that even possible?    
  
_ Shit _ . Lance realized was maybe getting in too deep, at least for a situation in which Keith had just coughed up blood.  _ Keep this professional. Be an ethical nurse, Lance, you ungodly horn-dog. Dios mio.  _ _   
_

Lance steadied himself and kept going, beginning to work at softly scratching Keith’s scalp. 

Keith couldn’t help but lean into Lance’s hand, his mouth falling open. He was coursing with pleasure. This is not what he was prepared for. It felt erotic. He bumped his nose against Lance’s stomach.

Chills went down Lance’s spine and rippled through the rest of his body. His breath hitched.  _ Fuck fuck fuck fuck--  _ He was trying desperately not to read into this, not to notice the homoerotic nature of it all, not to get hard, but it was getting past a point of no return. He looked away from Keith’s face, one that was almost inherently sexual, might he add.    
  
He needed an escape.

Lance’s fingers tugged Keith’s hair ever so slightly and he let out a very soft moan.    
  
Lance felt his brain break.

“HEY uh- do want to watch a movie?” he fumbled frantically, voice cracking and louder than he’d anticipated. He was now half hard and Keith’s mouth was right there. He blinked through his manic embarrassment. 

Keith’s eyes fluttered open and he smiled softly. He felt like Lance had tamed him.

“Alright. Got any ideas?” God, he had a sex voice and they weren’t even doing anything. He shifted his head and stilled immediately. That was definitely Lance’s dick, hard, underneath him. Keith was drunk on exhaustion and Lance’s touch, and instead of surprise he stared at Lance wordlessly with half lidded eyes.  _   
_

_ This boy is going to kill me,  _ Lance realized. Keith could melt him into a puddle without lifting a finger. He wanted to kiss him. Hell, he wanted a lot more than that. But the timing wasn’t right, and there was so much unsaid, and neither were really all that ready if they were to think about it.   
  
So instead they put on a classic flick and snuffed out the heat yet again, and Lance battled tiredness to play with Keith’s hair until he knew sleep was so heavy that it blanketed them both.


	10. "Justin"

On a normal Wednesday afternoon Keith found himself looking for Lance on the fourth floor of the library. They’d had a text conversation going for a few minutes until Lance stopped responding. It had only been about six minutes, so Keith wandered through the aisles and thought little of it. They were both out of class and meeting up to work on homework together before heading home. 

Keith had had a really. Bad day. He was sure his lab professor had it out for him just because he missed more classes than not but he had the highest grade. Then the weird T.A. in Ethics hit on him again. And his boss called him into work tomorrow when he had been planning on finally crashing and burning.

And he hadn’t slept very well the night before, surprise. And some graphic nightmare imagery that typically wouldn’t bother him much just wouldn’t get out of his head. His stomach was eating itself again. Every muscle in his body was sore and he had a permanent raging headache. Lights and sounds were deafening even in the quiet of the library.

So he was looking forward to spending time with Lance. 

And he’d been thinking, a lot, about the recent development in their relationship. About Lance getting an erection the other night while playing with Keith’s hair. Keith wondered intensely what Lance had seen in him to merit that reaction. 

A line had been crossed, right? Lance wanted him. Keith couldn’t see any other explanation at this point. And Keith was all for leaving things unsaid but this was approaching extreme. 

Keith walked around the end of a bookshelf and saw Lance sitting at a table by the huge bay windows. 

With some guy? That Keith did not recognize. He found himself walking faster.

_________________________ 

Lance tapped his foot and pretended he was reading his textbook while he waited for Keith. He had decided to wear makeup out in public for one of the first times today. Just a cat eye, some mascara, a bronzer. It was simple but he knew he looked distinctly nice, polished. Or he hoped. While he was quite good at it from years of dress up with his sisters, he usually didn’t take it out of the home for fear of, well, a lot of things.  But he wanted Keith to see. But didn’t want to seem too desperate. So he figured he could just go for it on one of their little study seshes. Casual. 

He was enjoying the anticipation until some asshole strut over to their table, and suddenly Lance felt very exposed.    
  
“Hey, mind if I sit here?” the guy had asked. He looked clean enough, but jocky, and rich, and white, and like a posterboy for gay repression.  Lance hesitated to answer, giving a deer-caught-in-the-headlights look instead, wanting to decline.     
  
Jock-boy held his hands out in front of him like a peace offering. “Not trying to be weird here, all the other tables are taken is all. But if it bothers you, I can just, uh…” he trailed off.    
  
When Lance fumbled to be polite, saying “No, sorry, yeah of course you can sit,” the guy didn’t seem at all surprised, just grinned as he took the seat directly next to Lance despite several other chairs at the table being available.  Lance still felt on guard, but the nagging thought that he had been rude and pretentious to think this dude was hitting on him was equally as powerful. 

“Thanks, owe ya one. I’m Justin, by the way.” he stuck his hand out. Lance thought he was going to be blinded by his neon blue polo. Where was Keith?   
  
“Cool.” Lance said, trying not to grimace as he took his hand. Too firm. Weirdly moist. He was overreacting. “I’m, uh, Lance.”    
  
“Nice to meet you Uh-Lance.” he said, and Lance faked a weak laugh. “So what are you doing here?”    
  


“Studying.” Lance said, trying to keep his eye on his books.    
  
“Want to take a break?” the guy said. It was hard not to feel it was a skeevy request. He hadn’t really been hit on by guys like this spare at nightclubs and gay bars, and he wondered if the makeup had been a part of the equation.     
  
“I’m actually waiting for my,” the slightest pause, “boyfriend.” He wasn’t sure why he had said it. Maybe he just took a small comfort in the thought. 

“Aw, is your ‘boyfriend’ late to dates a lot?” he made a weird and ugly condescending face, even putting the word “boyfriend” in air quotes. God this guy was obnoxious. 

  
Another forced laugh. Lance hated that he always did that. “No, not really.” Where was Keith?  He was sitting too close. 

“You know, you’re really pretty.” 

“Thanks,” he said uncomfortably, avoiding eye contact. So it definitely was this sort of thing. He felt like a prey animal, distress signals practically blaring from his body language. His eyes shifted to the shelves to the left, searching for an out.  

Then the guy put his hand on his thigh.  Lance felt like a major boundary had been torn down. He felt gross.    
  
“I’m sorry but I don’t really like being touched.” he said softly, trying to squirm away. The hand stayed. Lance searched the room for an exit, and his pleading eyes met with Keith’s, who was just arriving and across the room.  

“Aw, come on, is your ‘boyfriend’ going to--”  

_________________________ 

“Stop touching him.”Keith materialized by the table. 

‘Justin’ looked up at Keith, unaffected. Keith saw that in  _ all _ of this, he still had not removed his hand from Lance. He saw red.

“Oh, are you the boyfriend? Cause if so-

Keith wrenched the guy’s chair back easily while ‘Justin’ looked all surprised. 

“Woah what the hell’s wrong with you?”

“I said. Stop. Touc-” Then Justin made the sorry mistake of jabbing his finger in Keith’s face in protest, which Keith never handled well. 

In a second his fist connected with the guy’s jaw and made a loud crack that echoed across the room. Justin toppled over, chair and all.

Keith glared down at him with fists clenched, every muscle absolutely tensed, death in his eyes, and growled, “Leave unless you want me to break your arms.”

“WOAH! Keith!” Lance cried, jaw dropping. He hadn’t seen Keith look so wild before, like claws and fangs were growing from his human exterior, like a wildfire had been lit in his eyes. Lance felt flushed. 

  
“Is that a fuckin’ threat?” Justin yelled, standing up and coming at Keith again. He was holding a hand to his busted jaw but unrelenting in aggression.   
  
“Hey!! Guys, calm down!” Lance cried out to deaf ears. 

“Yes, it is,” Keith hissed. 

He was about to give another warning but Justin lunged, and before Keith could retaliate they both toppled to the ground. Justin grappled with Keith struggling to get out from beneath him, and in an opening punched Keith across the face. 

Keith stilled for just half a second before fixing Justin with a look that had him scrambling to get off.

Justin swung again, trying to push Keith back, and Keith grinned, blood trickling down his chin. He grabbed Justin’s wrist and yanked him forward, then rolled out from underneath and pinned Justin’s arm behind his back. Keith planted his knee in the center of his back and pressed viciously, pulling the arm unnaturally taut. 

“Remember what I said?” Keith asked, eyes glinting. 

Justin cursed at him and clawed at Keith’s face with his free hand.     
  
Lance stood at the sidelines, hands reaching out at nothing in particular. His eyes were mostly trained on Keith, blood dribbling down his chin, trembling rage (over Lance). Truthfully, Keith was… really hot like this.   

“Hey!! We’re all gonna get in trouble-” Lance said anyway   
  
Just then a librarian came over, furious and disbelieving. 

“What are you two  _ doing? _ ” 

_______________________

“I can’t believe we got banished from the library forever.” Lance groaned, running a hand over his face in despair. He and Keith sat side by side on a nearby park bench, book bags strewn about them. 

He hung his head in defeated silence for a few moments until his sighing turned into tired snickering. “Keith, I can’t believe we got banished from the library forever.” he said again, this time his shoulders shaking with mirth as he eyed the other. 

Keith had been glowering at nothing but he cracked a smile eventually. 

“I can. I really was going to break his arms, you know.” Keith sighed.

“And why is that Tuff Stuff McMuscles?” Lance asked, realizing they had to kind of talk about why Keith had gotten angry. Was it egotistical to think he was being… possessive or something?

"Why did you call me your boyfriend?" Keith countered, with a smirk.   
  
Lance blushed fiercely, not knowing how to respond.   
  
Keith also wanted to say  _ because you’re mine  _ but settled on the more rational, “He deserved it. I saw him put his hands on you even after you told him to stop.”

No matter the fact that Keith had gotten a lot of satisfaction out of beating the guy up. He realized that he had a good excuse this time, but in the future, when Lance was simply being hit on, he would have no reason to react the way he did. 

“Sorry, I know I let myself get carried away.” Keith really was just wishing he hadn’t hesitated before jerking Justin’s arms out of their sockets.

“My hero! Why, don’t be sorry!” Lance drawled in a forced country damsel accent.  “Whatever can I do to thank ya for savin’ me, mister?” he batted his eyelashes.

“Oh my god,” Keith laughed, “No need for the accent.”   
  
“I’m just speaking the home language of your people, Keith.” Lance quipped.

Keith gaped. “I lived in Texas for four months. Four months. I don’t have an accent, and I hate country music.”

“I lived’n Texas fer four months!” Lance mimicked in a country accent again.

“ _ Lance,”  _ Keith warned.  

Lance laughed, rejoicing in seeing Keith tick, but dropped it because he was finally learning how not to take his teasing too far. Most of the time.    
  
“But really, Keith. Thanks.” he said. Suddenly he had to avert his gaze, a dusty blush threatening to expose his weird gushy feelings about the idea of Keith being protective of him when they weren’t even dating.   
  
Keith wanted to ask Lance if he had a thing for cowboys.

“Well you don’t need to thank me. It was my pleasure. Although I am going to miss the library.” 

“I’m gonna miss it too.” Lance sighed. “I guess we’ll still have the bookstore or whatever. Fuck the library! I’m just glad ‘Justin’ was banned too. I hope he’s sporting a black eye for a good two weeks, that lil douche-arooni..”  

“No black eye,” Keith said, “But I’m pretty sure I dislocated his jaw.” Keith brushed his tongue over his own busted lip and wished again that he’d been less merciful.

“Are you serious?” Lance started, half amazed. He finally was able to pay attention to Keith’s face now that the action had died down. “Oh wow, you’re… kinda beat up too, dude.” he said, bringing his thumb to Keith’s bottom lip.    
  
Too soft, both his touch and Keith’s lip. They were red and plump, distracting. Lance stared too long, then made too open of eye contact. His fingers were brushing Keith’s jaw, and he felt they were both in slow motion, the rest of the world muted. Another magic moment, this one more soft and tender and heated than the others, he felt. 

“I’m fine,” Keith said, slowly. He wanted to suck Lance’s fingers into his mouth. “I’ve had a split lip before. It’ll be gone by tomorrow.”     

Lance’s gaze drifted back down to the injury and involuntarily bit his own lip without realizing he was doing it. “Uh-huh... “ he replied quietly. 

“What?” Keith began. Lance was looking at him funny. Did he know what he was doing? Lance’s fingers were sending electricity through his body. He wanted so badly for Lance to thread them through his hair and pull, hard. “Do I still have blood on my face?” 

“What? Oh, uh!” he ripped his hand away like it were on fire. “No. I mean, just a little. Sorry. Hey did you know that snails can eat dirt if they don’t have any other food source? Just like munch away. And they can hibernate whenever, not just when it’s winter.” he rambled in a bad attempt to change the subject. “Relatable.”

“Oh, uh…” Keith looked at Lance with furrowed brows, “No, I didn’t know that.” Keith’s heart pounded in his ears. Lance had been looking at him like…

Keith started, without thinking, “Hey were you just-” He stopped, started again, “Do you like-” He stopped again. He couldn’t go through with it. He couldn’t handle a no. He couldn’t handle finding out that he was just something nice to look at. Maybe not even nice, just something.

He sighed. “I meant to ask where you think we’ll be doing our studying from now on.”  

Lance was still blushing furiously, but it all was getting to be hilarious. Why the hell were they like this? He actually laughed. __ I can’t believe Keith’s gay ass just pummeled some dude just because he touched me…   
  
“Well, guess we’ll just have to switch it up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i live for satisfying tropes hope y'all like the chappy!!! next chap will be.... saucy


	11. Please I'm So Thirsty

Lance thumped his head back onto his pillow, breath hitching as a thumb slid over the head of his dick to swipe away precum.  

“Fuck,” he breathed quietly, “Fuck, fuck.”     
  
He was so screwed. He didn’t know how long he could survive like this, slipping away to jack off about two times a day just to manage the unbelievable sexual tension he and Keith kept intricately building thicker and thicker with no release. He was losing his mind.

Hunk had asked him, “Why don’t you dummies just talk about it? Obviously.”  but Lance just… couldn’t.  How would he? 

_ Hey Keith, I think I’m madly in love with you, probably, and I don’t know how long it’s been if I were to tell the truth. I feel like my whole coming of age has been a slow growing of feelings for you at this point, and one day I just stepped back and thought ‘Wow, Keith’s the most important person in my life, I trust him wholly and completely, he is my best friend and muse. I’m never not thinking about him.’ Also please, please let me suck your dick. Please I’m so thirsty. _

Lance thought about wrapping his lips around Keith’s throbbing cock, thought about the weight and heat of it in his mouth, how it would taste. He thought about how it would feel sliding in and out, brushing the back of his throat, slow and steady. Then he thought about how Keith’s hands would feel in his hair, holding tight, pulling, almost painful, guiding Lance’s head back and forth on his dick faster and faster until Keith couldn’t hold back anymore. He thought of Keith fucking his face hard.    
  
Lance moaned and jerked himself faster. As he imagined Keith coming in his mouth Lance cried out Keith’s name, breathless and cracked, and orgasmed harder than he had in forever. Maybe harder than he ever had period.  

And after a second of deafening silence Keith choked from where he stood in the doorway, hand clenched around the doorknob. He dropped the stack of Lance’s clothes that he’d been carrying on the ground absently.

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t know you were home!” Keith managed to shout before stepping out of the room and slamming the door shut. He fell back against the closed door with wide, wide eyes and heaved a deep breath. And then another, and another. He was sweating.   
  
It all happened so fast that Lance didn’t even get to see Keith, just the sight of his door trembling against the frame with how quickly it’d been shut. His soul left his body. For a while he did nothing, just felt the residual waves of pleasure rack his body as his mind drained from his skull.  _ Before you die, your brain releases tons and tons of endorphins that make you feel a range of emotions. Tragically beautiful. _ __   
  
Then it snapped.    
  
“NOOOOOO” Lance mourned, mortified. Why did this stuff always happen to him?   
  
_______________________   
  


Lance took a good 40 minutes preparing himself to drag his corpse out of his room and face the real world and all of its brutal consequences. Nonetheless, he did it. It had to be talked about eventually because that night there would be an event at their gay club for the local pride parade, and since their friend group together formed the entire LGBT+,  they’d all be going, and Lance simply couldn’t leave the last thing between them to be Lance coming to Keith’s name.    
  
So, he knocked on Keith’s door, ready to apologize, and then walked in without waiting for a response because neither of them ever learned from mistakes.

Keith was lying on his bed, looking uncomfortable.

And he was uncomfortable because he had been literally a second away from fucking himself to the image of Lance moaning his name. He had to jerk his hand out of his briefs and yank the covers up to his waist to avoid Lance seeing his erection. 

Keith was caught between an adrenaline rush and the hilarious knowledge that, had he not moved as quickly, they would have both walked in on each other masturbating within the same hour. 

“Hey,” Keith rasped.   __

“Hey, man.” Lance started, eyes determinedly refusing to meet Keith, who probably could have been fucking himself right in front of Lance without being noticed. 

  
“Look, I just want to apologize. I don’t know how you’re feeling at all, but it’d make sense if you were grossed out and uncomfortable. You’re a really important friend to me but I’d get it if you didn’t want to talk to me anymore. I’m really sorry, dude. ” 

Keith blanked. He stared at Lance vacantly.

“What?” His thoughts were mud. His erection throbbed underneath the comforter. “Uh- Lance,”  _ It’s really ok because I’m in love with you and that was the hottest thing that’s ever happened to me and I desperately want to sleep with you and I don’t care if you want to fuck me or be fucked but I have a feeling you were thinking of taking my dick-  _

“You don’t have to apologize at all. I didn’t even knock before I came in. And it’s not like-” Keith faltered. 

Say it.  _ Say it, Kogane. You have literally no reason not to at this point you fucking cowar-  _ “It’s not like I didn’t like what I saw.” 

Lance whipped his face up to gape at Keith, only now noticing the huskiness in his voice. His mouth opened and closed softly a few times like a fish gasping for water, before he just placed a hand over it.  _ It’s not like I didn’t like what I saw…  _ Lance could hear it echoing in his brain which had pretty much entirely shut down at this point.   
  
“Are you -- are you just saying that?” Lance finally asked, a hunger hiding just beneath the surface. 

“No,” Keith answered almost before Lance had got the words out. “Not just saying that.” His erection wasn’t going anywhere and Keith considered just pulling the covers back and showing Lance as proof. But didn’t. 

“I mean it.” He repeated.    


Lance felt a billion sparks flow through his body, a warmth rush over him in waves, goosebumps and shivers and butterflies and all that other gay shit. He could cry. Oh no, he realized, he would cry, now.   
  
Overwhelmed and relieved tears prickled at the corners of his eyes and his lip began to tremble as he tried to hold back the tsunami.   
  
_He likes me, oh my god, he likes me_ _back._ __  
  


A disbelieving but happy laughter overcame him as he cried. He quickly covered his face with his hands and stood there, shoulders shaking as he tried to hide what a sensitive little baby he was. 

“Woah,” Keith sat up. He wanted to stand, to go to Lance, but his dick was still rock hard. “Hey, you ok? Are you,” Keith fisted his hands in the sheets, frustrated with himself and his ridiculous sex drive, “Are you crying?”    
  
“It’s good crying!!” he explained through sniffles, taking a step forward towards the bed. “I’m just really hap--”    
  
Pounding at the front door interrupted him. 

“HEY PARTY PEOPLE!” Hunk’s voice boomed from outside the apartment.

“Answer the door I need to go to the bathroom!” Pidge added, annoyed.

_ ________ _

The drive to the club was crackling with excitement, conversation flowing easily. Everyone’s mood was up, albeit for different reasons. Allura was driving so of course Shiro was in the front passenger seat. The “kids” were all crammed in the back, somehow squeezing in to avoid getting gutted by parking fees.  Hunk took one window seat and Lance took the other, which left those who Hunk called “the little gremlins” to sit in the middle. Keith and Lance were wedged next to each other, thighs pressed tight whether they wanted them to be or not.    
  
Keith had his arm around Lance’s shoulder. It could have been passed off as a result of the close quarters. But not really the fingers he had tracing along the length of Lance’s neck. Besides, things were undeniably different now. And Keith was ready to take advantage.    
  
“So who’s ready to get some overpriced drinks with those neat little garnishes on top?” Hunk asked. 

“Me!” Pidge chimed.  Hunk tutted.   
  
Lance wasn’t really listening to any of it, steadily thinking about the kinda-confession and about the warm fingers Keith was running on what he was now realizing was a very sensitive spot. Were they, like, boyfriends? He stared out the window blushing and trying to hide a little smile most of the time.    
  
Shiro cocked an eyebrow at Keith from the rearview window. 

Keith’s expression remained carefully neutral as he tightened his grip around Lance’s shoulder.

Shiro sighed, tired but pleased. Allura caught on, now also glancing back and forth between the road and the two boys in the back.    
  
“So,” she began sharply, “Keith? Lance? Any new developments with your living situation?”

“Yeah,” Pidge began, a little too chaotically, “Any new developments?”

Lance was gonna die.  He started sputtering, “What do you- Uh, we...We uh-”

“We kind of...talked.” Keith saved Lance from his self-destructing nerves. He was shit at this too but at least he could manage a level voice.  

“Yeah! We talked. So shut up!” Lance agreed. 

  
No one said anything else after that. Although Allura was smiling sanctimoniously behind the steering wheel for the rest of the car ride.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry about the wait folks finals were kicking our asses!!!!! still workin on this tho!


End file.
